


Cat's Cradle

by zuzeca



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle City Arc, Blow Jobs in a Car, Bodyswap, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Comedy, Dimension Travel, Driving, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Family Feels, Family Issues, High School, Horror, John's Cadillac, Kul Elna, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mystery, Names, Pancakes, Possession, Sennen Items | Millennium Items, Time Travel Fix-It, Waffles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-24 13:43:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20359462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: After receiving the Millennium Necklace during the events of Battle City, Yugi attempts to use it to see the events of the past, and inadvertently sets off a chain reaction of ancient magic. Now, separated from his partner and trapped in a dangerous pocket dimension spawned from Ryou’s mind, Yugi must ally with Yami Bakura to survive horror movie monsters, treacherous terrain, and inclement weather, as in another dimensional rift, Ryou Bakura and Yami Yugi, likewise separated, begin to uncover the dark secret of Kul Elna. Meanwhile, back at the Battle City finals, Malik Ishtar finds himself the last man standing, stuck with the job of saving the world. In Anzu’s body.





	1. Opening

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is my entry for the 2019 Yu-Gi-Oh! Big Bang. Featuring phenomenal artwork by BrightCea/Ceasdraws ([here](https://ceasdraws.tumblr.com/post/187246097090/the-first-piece-i-did-for-lyresnake-awesome-fic) and [here](https://ceasdraws.tumblr.com/post/187246305085/i-dont-usually-kleptoship-but-lyresnake-fic-was)) and Ryuutchi ([here](https://ryuutchi.tumblr.com/post/187248164417/art-and-mix-coming-soon-cats-cradle-by-zuzeca)). It's been a grueling last few months with work but many thanks to everyone who helped this put its best foot forward and encouraged me to keep going. And also for the day of jury duty in which I cranked out like 10k words of this and finished it. Do your civic duty folks, and the universe will reward you by unsticking that pesky writer's block.
> 
> Betaed by the kindly JazzyMin. Enjoy!

The constant hum of the Kaiba-Corp blimp engines made it impossible to sleep. That, and the knowledge there were at least two people onboard who probably wanted him dead. Maybe three if you counted both Maliks separately, which seemed to be in order. Yugi stared at the ceiling of the miniscule cabin, stretched out flat on the narrow bed, making a game of counting the tiles, and avoided looking at his nightstand.

Said nightstand was currently occupied by the Puzzle, the jagged shadows cast by the object bending and waving in the fluctuating light from the porthole, and the Millenium Necklace, which Isis had pressed upon him just hours previously.

_ “What do you think she intended by it?” _ said the spirit. He was facing away from Yugi, seated on the floor beside the bed, arms draped over his bent knees, the translucent spikes of his hair poking up over the edge of the mattress.

“By what?” said Yugi, squinting at the tiles.

_ “She said the Necklace was not hers to carry any longer. But what are we intended to do with it?” _

Yugi sighed and rolled over to face the edge of the bed. He could “feel” the spirit looking at him, even though the image he projected was still facing away from him. “I don’t know,” he said, with a quick glance at the Necklace. “I’d say look into the future, but if the last duel was any indication, Destiny doesn’t have anything on Seto Kaiba.”

The spirit snorted, a small, dry laugh, and Yugi smiled to himself, the tight feeling that had occupied his chest since they’d visited the museum easing.  _ “Fair enough. I don’t suppose knowing the future will change what we have to do anyway. Malik is still here, and still a threat.” _

Yugi tucked his knees towards his chest, hooking a hand under them and shivering. “Right.”

_ “Are you afraid?” _

Yugi hesitated. “A bit,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter, I can still—”

_ “Yugi, _ ” the spirit half turned, looking up at him over the bed.  _ “It wasn’t a criticism. I am afraid as well.” _ His voice was solemn, facial features almost lost in shadow.  _ “More afraid, I think, than I can ever remember being.” _

Yugi drew in a sharp breath and reached out with his free hand across the coverlet. The spirit reached back, took his hand, a faint tingling sensation that he felt more in his mind than on his skin. Gentle pressure on his palm. He turned it over, cupped and felt soft tickling, as though he’d caught a butterfly in his hand.

He knew what the spirit was doing, tracing the smooth, red weals burned into his skin by hot metal, jagged, geometric lines, the rounded curves of the partial shape of the Eye.

“It’ll be alright,” he said, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel. “But we both need rest, regardless. Come to bed.”

The words slipped out unintended and he bit his tongue, but the spirit’s eyes only softened, taking on that strange half wistful look he sometimes wore when he thought Yugi wasn’t looking. Yugi knew that the spirit didn’t sleep, not in the traditional sense, but he could read the deep weariness in him and projected a sense of warmth and welcome in kind, a technique he’d have been hard pressed to describe, but that he’d found garnered a positive response.

_ “You’re right, of course,” _ said the spirit, smiling faintly.  _ “Thank you, Yugi.” _

He vanished without ceremony, blinking out of existence. But Yugi could feel the brief brush of him as he passed, and hoped he’d stay in the antechamber between their conjoined minds, rather than walking the dark labyrinth as was his want when his mood was particularly low.

Yugi sighed and scrunched down the covers so he could wiggle under them, the fabric of his pants catching on the sheets. He tucked the coverlet over his shoulder and paused to consider the Puzzle on the nightstand. After a moment, he reached out and tucked it with care against the curve of his stomach, sliding the chain over his head. It was a mostly symbolic gesture, but it still made him feel better.

Settled, he shut his eyes and made a bid for sleep.

Yugi’s dreams had never been what could be considered peaceful, and the tournament had done a number on them, adding new dimensions, the scent of smoke in his nose, the icy taste of saltwater, the squeeze of shackles. And here and there, a faint glimpse of a being cut from shadows, cold, glowing eyes looking out at him. Sometimes it looked like Malik, or Bakura.

And sometimes it looked just like him.

He woke, sweating and startled, ears ringing as they strained for noise. The cabin was even darker, moonlight gone, only the faint red pulse of one of the exterior lights, flashing out a notification to passing planes.

He rolled on his side, tried to catch his breath, and looked at his nightstand.The Necklace was just barely visible in the dark. On impulse, he reached out, picked it up.

It was heavier than he’d expected, which he supposed shouldn’t have surprised him. He turned on his back and rested it on his chest, just above the Puzzle, contemplating the Eye in the center. He ran his thumb along the shape of it, smooth metal, cool. If he focused, he could feel a faint thrum between his fingers.

To be able to see the future. But whose future? His, the spirit’s, the whole world’s? The future, she’d said, and the past.

And Yugi felt very stupid indeed because wasn’t all of this happening because of things that had gone on in the past? If he could see something of it, perhaps they’d be able to come at this from a new angle, develop a new strategy. Surely it was worth a shot.

He considered putting the Necklace on, but eventually decided against it. Maybe when he was certain all this ancient magic wouldn’t blow his head clean off or something. Instead he held the band between his hands, as if making a circuit, and scrunched up his face at it, focusing.

_ I want to see the past. _

Nothing happened.

Maybe he needed to focus on something a little more specific. The past was pretty big after all, maybe the Necklace could only tune into one part at a time?

He focused again, gaze roaming as he tried to find something to fix in his mind. His gaze landed on the Puzzle, resting against his belly, cushioned by the white layer of his undershirt.

_ That’s it! I’ve been thinking about people, but that’s all wrong. I want to see the Puzzle’s past! _

To his excitement, the Necklace pulsed in his palms. Against him, the Puzzle gave a strange lurch, like a Rubix cube clicking into a new configuration. He held his breath as he felt something electric tingle against his fingers, followed by a catch, like a burr on a puzzle piece, like something caught in gears, keeping it from moving smoothly...

And then his ears filled with deafening screams and the world was on fire.

_ He pressed himself to the wall, trying to merge with the stone itself. His palms were bloody where he’d skinned them when he’d fallen, but the sting barely registered. He could hear the shouts of men and the screams of others, and flesh—burning flesh like when they’d bring home game and roast it but it wasn’t game. He knew it wasn’t. It was people, trapped in their homes and kindling thrown in after.Then She’d thrown him; broken a chunk of mud brick with her grinding stone and shoved him through the narrow opening. _

_ Momma! _

_ Bodies everywhere, soldiers dragging them, blood and entrails pink in the dirt. _

_ Momma! Momma, where are you? _

_ He ran down, down as she’d taught him, down like a rat going to ground. Underground was safety, security, a place to hide from the burning fire of Ra’s light. _

_ But no—no it wasn’t right, wasn’t safe because the fire  _ ** _was_ ** _ underground now, the drying, suffocating heat of a forge, hot enough to melt metal. _

_ Hot enough to burn bodies. Their bodies. The bodies of his friends and family.  _

_ The soldiers were loading them into a vat, like the one Momma used to make beer but big, so big and instead of beer it was molten gold but gold didn’t glow like this— didn’t devour them bodies melting, hands and arms and legs and feet and —Momma Momma where are you what’s happening stop it stop it wake up wake up wake UP— _

** _“What is this?”_ **

_ A shout, echoing in his mind, shocking and incongruous, freezing him where he stood. And then the Pharaoh was there, the Pharaoh but not the Pharaoh he looked like the-boy-Yugi-me standing there naked shock and horror on his face and then they-he twisted and they felt the surge of white hot rage billow up from within— _

** _—GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT NOT YOURS TO SEE NOT YOURS TO HAVE OUT OUT OUT—_ **

_ Reality rang like a struck gong, reverberating through his head, shaking his skull until he thought it would fly apart and then he was somewhere cold so cold no air no light no life, all implacable darkness. _

_ Two slits opened in the darkness, red like fresh blood, red like rubies lit by fire. _

_ And he was under it, under its gaze, caught like a mouse in the eyes of a snake. Its mind bent around his, bent his. Huge, impossible to grasp the scale of it, hate and rage and hunger big enough to swallow the world, swallow the sun. And he couldn’t scream, couldn’t make a sound. His eyes burned, unimaginable heat baking them in his skull. His skin crawled, insects devouring flesh and dying and being reborn over and over. _

_ He screamed. Yugi screamed. They screamed as one and many. _

** _“YUGI, WAKE UP!”_ **

He surfaced to hands around his throat. Pale hands, skeletal fingers, Ryou’s hands, Ryou’s face stretched in a horrifying rictus, Ryou-not-Ryou, distorted, snarling, blistering with rage, nothing human in that visage, screaming over and over, “What did you do, you idiot child? What did you DO?”

He dug his fingernails into the wrists, clawed and fought. Fought like he’d wanted to when they picked him up and struck him, threw him, hurt him. Fought for life, fought for breath.

The spirit blazed up in his mind, white hot fire and magic burning his veins, under his skin, and  _ pushed _ .

Ryou-not-Ryou recoiled, recoiled from skin suddenly the temperature of burning metal, but didn’t let them go, hands fisting in his shirt, body stretching, posture exaggerated, insectile, face in their own, foul breath blasting their face, the weight of the Ring clacking and tangling against the Puzzle, striking the Necklace with the melodic clang of metal on metal. And they were clawing, both of them, all of them at once, reaching for the power, light blazing up and blinding--

Something lurched, some ancient mechanism, like a trap pulley quiescent for a thousand years, and then there was a cascade, a cacophony, like an avalanche of rock, crushing and dividing and distorting, stretching the seams that held them together.

Until deep inside, they felt something warm and pulsing, something  _ vital _ , rip.

Yugi screamed a final time and blacked out.


	2. The Soldier’s Bed

Bakura woke up sure he was in hell.

Granted, this wasn’t exactly a new experience for him. Having traveled the shadows for close to three millennia, flicking in and out of existence in the space between moments, he was fairly certain that hell, or Duat, or whatever final void awaited him once he’d achieved his goals, wouldn’t hold any surprises.

And hell had nothing on Kul Elna.

He shivered, a deep shudder of rage, buzzing between his ears, sitting hot behind his eyeballs. Or the sensation of his eyeballs. He’d never bothered to consider the sensory terminology associated with being stripped of flesh, cut from reality until only the shadow remained.

He was lying face down, face smashed against unforgiving stone. This was a familiar position for him too, repeated in a dozen encounters with guardsmen and  _ other _ bandits during his brief but lucrative career as a tomb robber. 

He rolled over, sat up, and opened his eyes.

His last memory was walking the labyrinth of the Puzzle. His last memory was the hot fire of Osiris as it tore his mind from its moorings. His last memory was Kul Elna. His last memory was trying to murder the Pharaoh's Vessel, rage and horror and violation, that he didn’t think he was still capable of experiencing, driving his grip.

He shook his head sharply, sending his landlord’s long, pale hair flying and a wave of dizziness through him. Had his divided self pulled his mind back to the fragment in the Puzzle, like a bowstring snapping into place?

He stared.

He’d been lying on one of the landings of the endless, repeated staircases of the Puzzle, looking down into the abyss, looking up into what should have been the enclosed roof of the labyrinth.

Only now, it twisted, as though someone had unscrewed part of the Puzzle and opened it to the outside. Metal and glass spires jutted downwards-upwards into the space, modern buildings, broken windows.

Huh. Well that was new.

There was a low, pained sound from behind him, and he froze, then turned.

Yugi was sitting up, sprawled halfway across the stairs below him, gingerly rubbing at a spot on his head, ruffling that ridiculous hair of his. He looked as if he would be sick.

Yugi, not the Pharaoh. Oh, he still wore the Puzzle around his neck, but Bakura could scent the Pharaoh’s power from the other side of the universe and there was no trace of him here.

How very interesting.

Yugi blinked, eyes bleary and unfocused. He met Bakura’s gaze, and flinched.

Anger, banked and simmering, blazed in him for a reason he could not articulate. His lip curled. “What’s the matter, boy? Afraid without your precious pharaoh to protect you? Shall I come over there and finish the job?”

Yugi tensed but didn’t cower. There were no bruises on his throat, a fair indication that they weren’t anywhere corporeal, but Bakura was certainly willing to give shredding the kid’s soul directly a go.

“No,” said Yugi, subdued. He crossed his arms across his chest, a protective gesture that also pulled double duty as an expression of resolve. The kid was learning a thing or two from his spiritual hanger-on. “Was that real?”

Bakura blinked, momentarily thrown, then threw back his head and laughed, loud and utterly without humor.

“Was it real? You think I could conjure those sights and sounds from thin air? The way they screamed, the smell of their flesh burning? The way those men, the  _ pharaoh’s  _ men, laughed as they herded them like animals to slaughter?” He twisted at the waist, leaned forward, palms on the stone, elbows bent like a big cat waiting to pounce. “Oh it was real, little Yugi. Did you enjoy getting a taste of the background radiation of my dreams for the last three thousand years?”

Yugi hunched, an expression of unfiltered agony crawling across his face.

For some reason, this infuriated Bakura. He flipped over, lurched across the landing, crouched and fisted the edge of Yugi’s jacket, dragging him half off the stairs. “Well?” he barked. “Did you?”

Yugi didn’t answer. Nor did he struggle, though Bakura felt his arms tense through the jacket and his hands balled into fists.

With a snort of disdain, Bakura dropped him, and rose. “Of course. He didn’t have an answer three millennia ago and you don’t have one now.”

“You mean the Spirit?”

“Who else, the palace fishmonger? Of course the Pharaoh! Oh, he tried to deny it, tried to say he didn’t  _ know _ , but what did I get in recompense? In  _ blood-price _ for everyone related to me by even the slightest degree? Spat on, told I was lying to my face!”

Yugi’s mouth tightened, the familiar, stubborn look of someone rebelling against cognitive dissonance. “I can’t believe that.”

“ _ Belief _ has nothing to do with it.”

“I’ve carried him with me for a year now,” said Yugi, quiet but firm. “Always right here.” He rested a hand on his chest, above the Puzzle and to the left, over his heart. “He’s not perfect. He’s arrogant sometimes, hotheaded, thinks he knows best. But he’s kind, really and truly kind, in that way you can’t fake with all the niceties in the world.” He looked Bakura full in the face, and there was something solemn and shadowed behind those gentle eyes. “I know evil, I’ve seen it. Petty evil, selfish evil, banal evil, and I’m telling you, whatever happened between you, you’re wrong  _ about _ him.”

Something ugly uncoiled in Bakura’s chest, a sharp-edged ache that tasted of the sour flavors of resentment and maybe, just maybe, a hint of petty jealousy. He stalked back, looming over Yugi, letting the smothering miasma of his power leak from the seams of him, blanket the boy.

“You think you know evil, child of the rising sun?” he said, soft and deadly. “I’ve walked the shadows for millennia. I live evil, breathe it. It breeds in my flesh like maggots. I’ve looked into the face of things your tiny, human mind couldn’t grasp without melting and leaking out of your skull.” Something twitched, shifted inside and he felt claws pushing at the angles and edges of him, trying to tear their way out from within.  _ “We are the Darkness, Vessel of the Pharaoh, and we will devour him as we devour the sun.” _

Yugi didn’t move, didn’t reply. His face had gone completely pale, but his mouth set in a firm line, and his eyes could have been carved from stone.

Bakura shook his head once more, snapping back into his proper, manifest shape. He looked about, contemplating the surrounding stairs, the spires above-below.

“Where did you bring us?” said Yugi after several long moments.

“ _ I _ didn’t bring us anywhere,” Bakura snapped. He stretched out a hand and ran a finger across another stone staircase marching up into emptiness. “This whole place smacks of the Pharaoh’s design.” He cocked his head at Yugi. “Though I wouldn’t have taken him for a modern architect.” He gestured at the glass and metal buildings. “Seems like there’s a bit of you here as well.”

Yugi climbed to his feet and peered around them. He frowned. “How’s that possible? The Puzzle’s never looked like this any time I’ve seen it.”

Bakura shrugged. “He designed it as the ultimate prison, who knows what sort of traps he included.” He snorted. “It would almost be impressive if he wasn’t such an insufferable ass.”

Yugi glanced at him sharply, frowning. “Prison?”

Bakura snapped his mouth shut. He crossed his arms. “It’s none of your concern. I’m going up there,” he nodded at the nearest building, “to have a look around. Do as you please.”

He took a step, but Yugi moved in front of him, blocking his path. “Prison for whom?” he said.

Bakura ground his teeth. “For  _ himself _ , idiot child.”

“That’s a lie,” countered Yugi. “Isis told me he’d stopped something. Something huge. End of the world huge. I thought she meant some kind of natural disaster, but you’re talking like it’s something sentient? Something that’s in here with us?”

Bakura scowled. “The only thing in here with you that you need to concern yourself with,” he said. “Is  _ me. _ ”

Yugi’s eyes were entirely too keen, and Bakura was reminded uncomfortably that naive fool or not, destined or not, the boy had solved the Millennium Puzzle. Twice. One of those times in a burning building. He gave an abrupt turn, putting his back to Yugi, and stalked up the nearest staircase. A moment later, he heard the scrape of shoes on stone.

Yugi was following him.

* * *

Bakura halted when the protruding stairs marching out above him hung low enough over his head to stop his upward trajectory. Carefully, he turned ninety degrees to the left.

A large broken window on one of the buildings loomed next to him. At first glance it seemed near enough for an easy jump, but distances in this place could be deceiving. He eyed the window. Just beyond the glass he could see the remains of a burned and gutted flat walls streaked with soot and carpet peeling. 

He heard Yugi come up behind him. “What’s through there?”

He ignored the pointless question. He also ignored the pointed, passing thought that he didn’t have the foggiest clue either. He frowned down into the darkness of the open pit beneath the building’s inverted roof. There had to be a twist. He rummaged in his pants pocket and extracted a small coin, flicked it out in the direction of the window.

There was more than enough force in his throw to clear the gap, but sure enough, the coin plummeted into oblivion, a long arc, as though the distance was simply too great. He scrutinized the jump, trying to measure by eye, but nothing revealed itself.

“There,” said Yugi, suddenly, pointing somewhere above their heads. A ring, large enough to grasp, screwed into the stone of the stairs. 

A satisfying sense of realization, and a bit of annoyance that the boy had spotted the damn thing before him, sparked in him. As if Yugi hadn’t spoken, he took a running jump and reached for the ring.

Only to miss by nearly a foot. Stumbling, he flipped around, cursing under his breath and shot a murderous sneer at Yugi, who was trying and failing to completely muffle a small sound of amusement in his fist.

“Not like that,” said Yugi, with an instructive tone that made Bakura want to try choking him again. He eyeballed the ring a moment and, instead of jumping, took a few steps forward and half-crouched, bringing his hands together and displaying his laced fingers, palm up. He looked at Bakura expectantly.

Offering him a boost, Bakura realized. “Oh? How  _ kind _ of you. And what makes you think that will work?”

Yugi blinked at him as though the answer were obvious. “We’re in the Puzzle,” he said.

“And here I thought we were holidaying at the beach. What is your point?”

Yugi frowned. “The Items all have their own powers, don’t they? And the strength of the Puzzle is  _ unity? _ ”

Bakura suddenly had the overwhelming urge to murder that smug, pharaonic son of a bitch all over again.

He clenched his teeth, but made a short run, jumping, vaulting with one foot off Yugi’s cupped hands, heard the grunt of exertion as Yugi launched him. He caught the ring, swung back and forth in a small arc. He nearly let go and tried to make the leap but then paused, considered.

Refusing to look at Yugi, he stretched out his hand.

A scuff of sneakers on stone and then he thought his shoulder would be pulled from its socket as Yugi’s weight was applied. He ignored the painful wrench and used the boy’s momentum to swing him forward, tossing him.

Yugi landed ungracefully on the burned carpet, but managed to keep his feet. He scanned the gutted flat a moment, shouted, “Hang on, I’ll be right back,” and vanished.

This, of course left Bakura dangling above the abyss, a roiling, anger— _ anger _ , not discomfort, blast it all—burning in his guts as he considered his position. Would Yugi leave him here forever? As a method for getting rid of your enemy it seemed pretty sound, and if their positions were reversed...

A sound and Yugi appeared at the window again. There was something black and orange under his arm, which when he shook it out, proved to be an extension cable, dusted with soot. He hitched it around the handles of the double oven in the kitchen, then brought the trailing end to the open window and threw it.

Unthinking, instinctively, Bakura caught it, wrapped the plug around his palm for good measure, and let go.

A sickening plummet, but then he was brought up short. The cord scraped his hands as he latched onto it. Somewhere out of sight above him, Yugi let out a grunt of exertion, straining.

There was a short, tense silence.

“You’re too heavy. I can’t pull you up.”

Bakura rolled his eyes where the boy couldn’t see. “Then stay still and I’ll climb.”

Hand over hand, like the little, scruffy monkeys that had sometimes come up with the southern caravans. He braced his feet against the wall and up and up and up and then he was crawling over the jagged mouth of the window.

Yugi, who’d been hauling the last few feet, stumbled backwards and went down hard on his ass. He smiled weakly at Bakura, as if to say, “See what I mean?” and Bakura had to fight the passing urge to smack him. Without a word, he climbed to his feet and headed for the entryway, and by extension exit, of the apartment.

Fucking unity.

* * *

It only took a brief exploration of the inverted building to conclude that there was no exit through the lobby, though Bakura hadn’t written off the idea of throwing furniture through one of the other windows. Most of the apartments were ash, but Yugi discovered one near the stairwell that only appeared to have smoke and water damage and entered—without bothering to ask Bakura’s opinion on the matter—announcing as he did so his intention to loot the place.

Bakura couldn’t decide if he was more annoyed or impressed.

“You couldn’t have materialized us something a little more complete?” he said, as Yugi rummaged in the darkened refrigerator. Yugi opened a jar of what looked like pickles, sniffed them, and made a face.

“Refrigerator’s no good,” he said, as if Bakura hadn’t spoken. “Help me check the cabinets.”

“And why should I do that?” said Bakura. “It’s doubtful we even  _ need _ to eat in this place.”

“Tell that to my stomach,” said Yugi. He swung open one of the upper cabinets and craned his neck. “There!” He pointed at a purple plastic bag on the top shelf. “Can you grab it?”

Bakura felt his hackles rise. “If you think I’m going to be bothered  _ fetching _ for a—”

A shockingly loud gurgle split the room, the sound of a plaintively empty stomach. It took about two seconds of Yugi staring at him wide-eyed for Bakura to realize it had come from him.

Three thousand years of being beaten into submission by crippling hunger and now his stomach had decided to betray him in most heinous fashion.

He snapped his jaw shut and snatched the bag of pancake mix off the shelf.

Yugi uncovered a passably clean pan and bowl from another cabinet. The sink, shockingly, still had water, which ran clear after a minute or so, and turning the knobs on the dented stove produced a promising hiss of gas. Refusing to participate in this farce any further, Bakura sat at the table, looking over a kitchen knife he’d nicked out of one of the drawers. The handle had come loose on the tang and he fiddled with it, wiggling it to and fro as Yugi carefully mixed up a bowl of thin batter and managed to light the stove without killing them.

Bakura noted that he pocketed the matchbook afterwards.

Yugi hissed quietly and Bakura looked up to see him lick his burned fingers before going in again, determined expression on his face. He rolled up the pancake swiftly, then, to Bakura’s surprise, half turned towards him and tossed it.

Bakura caught the pastry without thinking. It was warm in his hand, the thin bread already cooling. He set his jaw and stuffed it into his mouth. It didn’t taste like much, but it eased the ache in his astral guts, and he hadn’t considered pedestrian matters like  _ taste _ in millennia.

He most certainly did not say thank you.

Yugi was munching on a rolled up pancake of his own, a simplistic expression of contentment on his face. Another hissed away in the pan. He didn’t ask Bakura if he wanted another, just tossed him a second pancake. Bakura examined it, lowered his hand.

“What is this?” he said. “You know by now that I’m not your little friend. There’s no need to play brainless host.”

Yugi sighed and flipped the pancake in the pan. “I know.”

“Let me guess, you felt  _ bad _ about what you saw in my memories and now you’re trying to make up for millennia of unpaid blood debt with a couple of sandy pancakes?”

Yugi scowled at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no amount of pancakes that could make up for…” He gestured helplessly. “But yes, I felt  _ bad, _ because that’s what you feel for someone when something terrible happened to them. And I wanted to make some pancakes and well, I’m going to  _ share _ , aren’t I? The two don’t have to be dependent on each other.”

Bakura snorted and stuffed the second pancake into his mouth.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” said Yugi quietly.

“I  _ did _ ,” said Bakura. “I told you. I proclaimed the whole monstrous mess in front of the pharaoh and all his court. They said I was lying and tried to have me killed.”

Yugi cocked his head at him, looking doubtful. “When you say ‘proclaimed’, what exactly do you mean?”

Bakura puffed, a hint of satisfied recollection curling through him. “I brought them something they couldn’t ignore. I raided the old bastard pharaoh’s tomb. Dragged his sarcophagus right into the throne room, scattered his jewels on the stones. Told that inbred jackal’s whore exactly what I thought of him and his father.”

Silence.

“You… didn’t try first without the whole sound and fury production?” said Yugi, delicately.

Bakura snorted. “Why should I?”

“You didn’t think that opening a dialogue by desecrating his parent’s grave might not get you what you wanted?”

Red boiled behind his eyes and Bakura shot up from the table. The knife clanged against the frying pan, raising a trail of sparks. Distantly, he noted with the vaguest sense of interest that Yugi had managed to lift the pan in just enough time to fend him off. Almost as if this wasn’t the first time he’d had to counter a knife.

“Don’t speak to me of desecration,  _ brat! _ ” he snarled in Yugi’s face. “You’re wearing my parents’ grave  _ around your neck! _ ”

Yugi shoved him back bodily with the still-hot pan and Bakura recoiled as it pressed against his skin. They both retreated a few steps. Bakura’s knuckles ached from his grip on the handle of the knife.

Yugi eyed him warily, then reached over, and with a kind of slow deliberation, put the pan back on the stove with a clunk.

Bakura stared at him.

Yugi picked up the bowl of batter and poured another dollop in the pan.

Confusion tugged at the ragged edges of his psyche, a conflicting urge to demand the boy explain himself or kill him outright. After a minute or two, he seated himself at the table and watched.

“Where is this place anyhow?” he said, when the silence stretched unbearably. “If it spawned from your mind, you must know.”

“It didn’t spawn from my mind,” said Yugi simply.

Bakura snorted. “How could you possibly know that?”

Yugi flipped the last pancake and shut off the gas. “Because,” he pointed at the purple bag of pancake mix, a smiling cartoon of an old woman on the front, “this is wrong.”

Bakura’s brow furrowed. “The pancake mix is wrong?”

“It’s not the brand we used when I was growing up,” said Yugi, patiently. “That one was red, with a logo that looked like a little girl. This brand is Western, American or maybe English. You don’t recognize it?” He shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure if this place,” he gestured at the sooty walls around them, “spawned from someone’s mind, it was probably Ryou’s.”

“Oh,” said Bakura, feeling caught rather flat-footed. Now that Yugi mentioned it, the bag  _ did _ look vaguely familiar…

Then his brain caught up with the rest of the sentence, and the full implications of being trapped in an Item-created pocket dimension spawned from his landlord’s mind.

“Oh, fuck,” he said.


	3. Side Story: A Plan With No Possible Flaws

Malik had to hand it to Isis, he thought, as he narrowly avoided having his brains bashed out—or rather having Anzu Mazaki’s brains bashed out—she might push the whole nonviolent sacred priestess act, but she could swing a table lamp like nobody’s business.

“Sister!” he hissed. “It’s me!”

His sister’s shadow froze. “Malik? What are you doing here?” He heard a clunk as she set the lamp back on the nightstand and then the scrape of a plug on an outlet. The room was thrown into sharp relief. Isis was bent over Rishid’s prone body on the bed, her face drawn. “I felt something—” She broke off as she glanced back and caught sight of him.

There was a profound, awkward silence.

He held up Mazaki’s hands. “I know what you’re going to say—”

“Oh, really?” she said. “Can you see the future now?”

“There wasn’t time for—”

“Malik, I’m not even going to comment on the  _ profound immorality and stupidity  _ of what you are doing. You let that poor girl go this instant! You’re putting her in danger—”

“We’re all in danger!” he shouted and winced when their voice went higher than he’d expected. “The fact that you’re fending off the Shadows with a table lamp is pretty well evident of that!”

She pursed her lips. “Fine. Was that you earlier? The dark force I felt?”

Malik shook Masaki’s head. “It wasn’t me. Or  _ him,  _ I think.” He found his gaze drawn inexorably to Rishid’s still face and swallowed hard. “How is he?”

She eyed him, weary. “He was struck by the strongest of the gods; how do you think he is?”

Something sick lurched in Mazaki’s stomach. “I didn’t—”

“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t intend for him to get hurt,” she said, her eyes flashing dangerously. “You knew it was a possibility.”

“I—not like this!” He shook their head and pressed a palm hard over Mazaki’s eye until color bloomed against the blackness; a painful habit he’d picked up to ground himself. “I just wanted to—!”

He could feel hot tears pricking at Mazaki’s eyes _stupid_ _don’t cry! this is your fault you fucking weakling you_— “Isis…”

She sighed and then warm hands caught their free one, unfolding the fist he’d unconsciously made and twining their fingers. She gave a little tug, and he stumbled forward, knees giving out as she guided him to sit next to her.

He ached to lean his head on her shoulder but didn’t dare. He let his hand drop from his face into his lap.

“I’m not strong like you, sister,” he said. “I couldn’t just accept it. The weight of tradition. The knowledge I’d live and die in the dark, just like all our ancestors before us.”

She sighed again. “I know,” she said. She turned her free hand over, palm up, revealing a long, ancient scar across her palm. “I told myself I understood the reasons for the rules, but in truth I all I understood was that if I followed them, I wouldn’t be hurt.”

He hunched, miserable, the sick weight of knowledge that she did know, as no one else alive except Rishid could know.

_ You were so obsessed with your own suffering that you couldn’t be bothered to see any of hers. _

“Then why stay?” he said, plaintive. “Why not leave?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Where would I have gone? The tombs contained my only family. Rishid, you. Mother…”

He tensed, as he always did when she mentioned the faceless woman who’d died giving birth to him. She watched him from the corner of her eye, her expression pensive.

“When I was seven years old,” she said. “About a year before you were born, Mother took me to her chambers. I wasn’t set to receive the Necklace until later, but she allowed me to touch it, handle it. It was…” She trailed off. “That night, I had a dream. A dream I couldn’t process or understand. A dream of light, of promise. In it I saw us, all of us. Rishid, me, and you—before I ever knew what you looked like—walking the streets of a brilliant foreign city, together, as a family. The weight of all our troubles lifted.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t until I went back a couple of years ago, calculated the date, that I realized.”

“The date?” he said, frowning.

She snorted out a small laugh. “June 4th, 1980,” she said. “The day Yugi Muto was born.”

His eyes went wide. She shrugged. “It didn’t matter. I was too young to understand, too young to fight back against the tide of destiny.” Her eyes met his. “But I never forgot. And I never gave up.”

He swallowed, squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She eyed him. “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, but why are you down here? I thought you’d be pursuing your own schemes.”

“I was going to go see Bakura—”

Her eyes narrowed, and he threw up his hands. “Wait, wait, let me explain! I thought he might be strong enough to help me overcome  _ him _ , regain control of my body!”

“Because Bakura is such an altruistic individual,” she said acidly.

“He—” Malik hesitated. “Well, he wants the Items too. Enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. But the point is, I was on my way up to try and get a hold of the Ring and it’s gone!”

“Gone?” she said. “Gone where?”

He made a frustrated gesture. “I don’t know. I felt...whatever that was, same as you, but when I made it up to the medbay Bakura wasn’t there any longer! He’d pulled out the IV and left the place in disarray.”

She stood, bolt upright. “We need to go find the Pharaoh. Immediately.”

He shook their head. “No good. I checked Yugi’s room right afterwards. It’s just down the hallway from medical. He was gone too.”

She cursed under her breath, a habit she’d picked up during their years in the tombs. Malik always found it strangely comforting, a little bit of humanity in his otherwise poised sibling. “Any idea where  _ he _ is?”

Malik paused, reaching out carefully. “Somewhere on the upper decks, I think. I can sense him somewhat, but it’s muffled.”

“Perfect,” she muttered. “So it wasn’t something specific to all the Items. Did Bakura and the Pharaoh have an altercation?”

“No idea.”

She rubbed her cheek. “So Bakura is who knows where. The Pharaoh is missing. Rishid is out of commission. One of the other finalists is comatose, and we have zero Items to defend ourselves against  _ him. _ ”

“And whose fault is that exactly?” Malik said petulantly.

She shot him a look. “I don’t think the one in Miss Mazaki’s body should be lecturing me on poor decision-making skills.”

“At least I’m doing something about all this!” he said. “I’m not about to let  _ him  _ just waltz off with my body and kill everyone!”

She held up a hand. “Peace, brother. You are right. We need to stop him before this gets further out of hand.” Her gaze swung to Rishid and her expression turned reflective. “Or at least delay him for a time.”

“I’d challenge him in a heartbeat,” said Malik. There was something twisting in Mazaki’s chest. “But I don’t have any of the gods. I don’t even have my deck, nothing that could even pose the slightest bit of trouble. Do you?”

Isis hesitated. “Not Ra,” she admitted. “There’s nothing I have with me that could overthrow it.” She sighed, the way she’d always done when she’d come to an unpleasant but inevitable conclusion. “Damn it all.”

“What?”

“We’re going to have to go talk to Kaiba.”


	4. Candles

He awoke to glaring sunlight and the taste of sand in his mouth.

Groaning, he rolled over, shielding his eyes as he blinked away grit. Had something happened and left him in control of Yugi’s body? One moment he’d been fending off Bakura, Shadow magic boiling hot under their skin, and the next agony had torn through him, a horrifying, ripping sensation, as though he were being pulled inside out. The hard, familiar ridge of steps cut into his spine, but he didn’t feel as if he was in the labyrinth of the Puzzle. He tried to spit, to clear the grainy feeling from his tongue, but his mouth was as dry as old bones.

“Yugi?” he croaked.

He couldn’t sense Yugi anywhere, he realized with rising alarm. Not the warmth of his spirit nearby, or even tucked away in the depths of their shared heart. He groped around his neck, felt the familiar weight of the Puzzle, but there was nothing but emptiness. He squinted against the light.

He seemed to be at the bottom of a pit? Or perhaps a well. Rough sandstone bricks rose up all around him, well over his head, though he could see now that there were steps cut into the brick, winding upwards in a spiral towards the white sun above him. A few feet to his right he caught a glimpse of more steps leading down into a pool of water.

“Well, I suppose that answers that question,” said a soft voice. He jerked, sitting upright in a rush, and immediately regretted it when his head swam.

Ryou Bakura, seated on the steps above him, arms folded across his knees, gazed down on him solemnly. The Ring dangled around his neck like the curled tail of a scorpion.

He tensed, but Ryou just raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not Yugi,” he clarified. “You’re the other Yugi, yes?”

“Yes,” he coughed, tried to clear his throat. “Where, where are we?”

“Well,” said Ryou. “Considering that the last thing I recall is coming to in a freezing duel arena with wind currents buffeting me and finding myself staring down a dragon the size of a skyscraper, I thought you might be the better one to answer that question.”

He flinched, just the slightest bit, his throat closing up and he bit his tongue. He’d had no choice; he knew that. Using Ryou as a hostage had been a ploy by Malik and the Spirit of the Ring. If he’d lost, Osiris would have fallen into their hands, and the world would have been at risk.

_ Then why did the Spirit of the Ring shield him? Even if it meant losing the duel? _

He shoved the thought aside.

When he didn’t answer, Ryou sighed and gestured towards the pool at the bottom of the stairs. “The water’s drinkable, in case you were wondering.”

“Thank you,” he rasped. Gathering his feet under him, he made his unsteady way down the stairs and knelt at the pool’s edge. The water was shockingly cold, a refreshing bite against overheated skin. He scooped it up and sucked greedily at his cupped palms until the pounding pulse of a dehydration headache receded somewhat, then splashed it against his face. It dripped and puddled on his shirt, leaving dark spots against the fabric of Yugi’s uniform.

Ryou was still sitting where he’d left him, head thrown back and hands hooked around his knees, examining the walls of the well.

“Fascinating,” Ryou said, half to himself. “This style of well wouldn’t have been common in Egypt—not with the Nile so readily available—we must be somewhere far from water.”

He blinked at the boy. “Egypt? What makes you think we’re in Egypt?”

Ryou looked at him as though the conclusion should have been obvious. “Well, the Items weren’t made in India, were they?”

“What?” he said, thrown.

“One of my father’s coworkers specializes in Indian archaeology,” said Ryou. “She curates an exhibit at the Domino Museum. Step-wells like this were apparently common. Shall we go topside and have a look around?”

He stared at Ryou, then cleared his throat. “Yes, uh, that would probably be wise.”

Ryou rose, gripping his knees and stretching, and started to ascend. After a moment, he followed.

Wherever this place was, they did indeed appear to be nowhere near a river. The desert stretched, flat and golden, in every direction and a small ways distant he could see a cluster of mud brick homes, butting up against a series of sheer cliffs.

“Look,” Ryou was shading his eyes with one hand, pointing out into the desert, an abstract smear of color on the horizon. “That might be the river. I don’t know how we’d reach it, however. That’s quite a distance.”

His gaze kept being drawn back to the homes, or village perhaps. Something about it rang familiar, but off, wrong somehow.

“Where are the people?” he said, trying to combat the creeping sense of unease. “We’re near a village, yes? Shouldn’t there be someone about?”

Ryou’s shoulders rose and fell. “I doubt it, if this is  _ his _ place…” His expression grew pensive. “I’ve never seen it with much clarity. He keeps things to himself unless it serves some ulterior purpose, but that’s probably Kul Elna.”

Kul Elna. The words were meaningless, but they still sent a strange, familiar shiver down his spine, as though he’d heard them before, and they had boded nothing good.

“The Spirit of the Ring, you mean?” he said. “This is his place?”

Ryou nodded. “He…” A strange shadow crossed his face. “Well, we should probably tread carefully.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

Ryou hesitated. “I don’t know the whole story. After he...you have to understand, I tried, many times, to...reach out, make contact, as Yugi did with you, I think. We...he and I, we’re a bit alike in some ways.”

His eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“When he found out about my sister and mother, what happened to them,” said Ryou and yes, he can remember, Yugi hearing whispers in the halls of the school,  _ car accident wasn’t it? his poor father _ . “Well, I thought that someone who’d also lost family violently would appreciate…” He paused, face drawn, and shook his head sharply, sending waves of pale hair over his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. The point is that the well of pain and hatred in his soul is very deep. Deep enough to blot out the sun, if you’ll pardon the hyperbole.”

_ Lost family violently… _

Memory intruded, that jarring tableau of blood and pain and screaming, all that screaming. He’d found himself manifested in the center of it all, watching in frozen horror as entrails spilled on sand and hot metal bubbled, as families were herded and gutted like animals by laughing soldiers.

Soldiers who’d been wearing—

“I do still have a question for you,” said Ryou, drawing his attention back. “Do you have any notion of how we ended up here? I’ve seen glimpses, in dreams or when he’s…” He grimaced. “Piloting my body. But it’s always just images, nothing this solid.”

He folded his arms. “I’m not entirely certain myself. I believe Yugi was doing something involving the Millennium Necklace.”

Ryou’s face lit with interest. “Another Item? What does it do?”

“I believe it allows the bearer to see into the future,” he said, thrown before realizing that of course, Ryou would have no idea regarding the Necklace’s existence. “Or the past I suppose, if they wished. I received it from a woman who said she was a tomb keeper of the pharaoh.”

“Ah,” said Ryou, his expression intrigued. “My goodness, a proper pharaoh and everything. So there really was something to his nickname for you.”

“I—nickname?” he said. 

Ryou coughed, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, you know,” he said, delicately. “What was Yugi doing with the Necklace again?”

He frowned but decided not to pursue further. “I’m not certain what his purpose was, by the time I was conscious of what was happening, the Spirit of the Ring was already trying to kill us both.”

Ryou’s eyes widened, and he paled a bit. “Oh dear. And you fought him off?”

He nodded. “But something about all three of the Items being in play, something...went  _ wrong _ , I suppose. I can’t explain it.” He nodded around them. “And then I woke up here, with you.”

_ And without Yugi. _

The space within his heart ached.

“I’m sure he’s alright,” said Ryou, and he blinked at the boy, startled. Ryou gave him a slight, encouraging smile. “Yugi, I mean. You’re concerned for him, aren’t you?”

He hesitated before nodding again. “I can’t sense his spirit at all. The last time it felt this way was when the Puzzle was broken…” He swallowed hard. “Even when we are separated, I can sense him nearby, the warmth of his heart. Now…”

Ryou didn’t answer, and when he looked up, he saw the boy’s face was writ with a reflective, almost resigned expression. He kicked himself; it was rude in the extreme to be getting maudlin over this in front of someone whose experience with someone like him had been well… less than pleasant. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, for some reason that he couldn't articulate.

“Why?” said Ryou. “Because of him? You didn’t make him behave like he did.” He smiled with faint irony. “It’s just...interesting I guess, to hear you speak, to hear the depth of emotion in your voice. It’s… good, that you love Yugi, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Love. It was strange to hear it stated so boldly, for someone to give a name to the warm, tight feeling in his chest, as though speaking it somehow made it real. It had been growing, like a small, persistent weed, in spite of his efforts to hide it from the light. He knew of Yugi’s feelings for Anzu of course—they were impossible to miss, bold, primary colors of excitement and shy desire—but sometimes, in the dark, when they lay together, invisible, heart-to-heart, he felt an echo of something that he didn’t dare to hope might mirror his own.

He made a slight, dismissive gesture. “I suppose then we should start working on finding a way out of here? Knowing him, there’ll be some sort of game to win or puzzle to solve.”

“Probably,” said Ryou. He gave a quiet snort of amusement. “Though, couldn’t the same be said about you?”

“What does that mean?” he said, affronted.

Ryou gave him a bemused look. “You’re telling me the King of Games wouldn’t protect his most closely guarded secrets with something similar?”

“Oh.” He hadn’t looked at it in quite that manner. He knew, of course, that the labyrinth of the Puzzle contained a myriad of traps and challenges to trap the unwary or ill-intentioned, but he’d always perceived it as something constantly existing, not something designed. But then...he must have designed it.

“What do you suggest then?” he said, vaguely disturbed. “Make for the village and see if we can escape through there?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the name. Something about it made his stomach turn. A thought occurred. “Do you think they’re here? Elsewhere in this world? Yugi and the Spirit of the Ring?”

“Maybe,” Ryou paused, but shook his head. “As for Kul Elna, I think… we’ll need to go there eventually yes. But that’s not how games work. I think our destination is there.” He pointed towards the river on the horizon. His mouth went tight. “But I do think, knowing him, that we’ll be back.”

He nodded, and they turned their feet towards the river, and hopefully, towards Yugi.

* * *

An hour into their trek across the desert and he was about ready to write off the idea that he was from Egypt entirely. The sun blinded them, and the arid breeze sucked moisture from their bodies with the greediness of a sponge. Their shoes protected them from the heat of the sand, but it still slipped and rolled beneath their feet, making progress slow. A glance at Ryou revealed that his skin was already bright red. At some point the boy had slipped his arms out of his dark coat and rucked it up above his head. It left his pale—but rapidly reddening—face peering out of the black cone of fabric, his shockingly white hair lining it, like a photo of a Catholic nun Yugi had once seen in one of his history books. The trailing edges of the coat flapped behind him like dark wings.

Feeling foolish for not having thought of it, he divested himself of his own coat and draped it over his head, creating a pocket of shade and combating the headache that had been pounding at his temples for the last however long.

Encouragingly, the smear of color on the horizon had begun to resolve into the shapes of buildings and vegetation, suggesting the presence of water. He paused to catch his breath and looked to Ryou. The young man’s skin looked painful and his mouth chapped, but there was a determined set to his jaw and stubbornness glittering somewhere in his sunken eyes.

He smiled grimly to himself. No person weak of heart could wield an Item; he knew it in the phantom core of him. They would make it.

The sun was well gone midday when they reached the outskirts of the city, a scattering of mud brick building lining crude streets. Beyond the tops of the low buildings he could see soaring walls, some kind of central citadel. It looked utterly unfamiliar, but something about it, about the shape against the horizon, tugged at something deep in his mind.

And yet, there were still no people. The streets were desolate, despite being strewn with all the accoutrements of a working community. They passed a building fragrant with the scent of baking bread and Ryou halted, half-turning.

He stopped himself, realizing with a twinge of guilt that he’d been making for the citadel with single-minded focus. Ryou was Yugi’s friend, regardless of who or what occupied his subconscious, and that entitled him to the Spirit’s protection. 

“Are you hungry?” he said, realizing as he did so that he was also starving, a peculiar, distracting tightness in his stomach that he usually classified as “something for Yugi to sort out”.

“A bit, yes,” said Ryou. He sounded as if his throat had been the victim of sandpaper. “But I was thinking they might have something to drink. Bakers and brewers tended to work in tandem.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” he said. “Let’s look then.”

The dim interior of the building was nearly blinding after the intensity of the sun. He blinked until the darkly glowing shapes began to resolve themselves into recognizable forms. A rough structure of mud brick, a faintly glowing mouth of banked coals. Loaves, alien in shape though still clearly bread, sat cooling to the left of the oven, but it was to the wide-mouthed clay jar below them that Ryou went. He crouched over the jar and sniffed deeply, before dipping a cautious finger into the dark mouth.

Ryou withdrew his finger and sucked it, looking thoughtful.

“Horrible,” he proclaimed. “But it’s still beer. Come and have some.”

He crouched by the young man. The ewer was heavy, and Ryou struggled to lift it. The jar jostled and liquid sloshed inside.

“Here,” he caught the bottom of the jar, stabilizing and guiding it so that Ryou could cradle the mouth and gulp at its contents.

Ryou pulled back with a satisfied breath and licked at his mouth. A trickle of beer had escaped and soaked the collar of his shirt, darkening the blue stripe of fabric, and leaving behind a couple of swollen pieces of barley. “Much better,” he said, a faint smile playing on his lips. “Thank you.”

Ryou helped him turn the jar, to get it oriented so that he could drink. Their fingers bumped, sending a strange tingle of unreality up his spine. He didn’t touch others that frequently in Yugi’s body, or if he did, it was with them, together, filtered through a shared lens of experience. This felt too sharp, overstimulating. He fumbled the jar and ended up slopping some beer down his front.

He cursed under his breath and corrected. Ryou stifled a laugh, shifting to brace one knee on the floor, like some classical statue of a water bearer. “Easy,” he said. “How’s that?”

He caught the jar and drank.

Liquid flooded him, sharp and sour. It inundated his senses, quenching the burning thirst and filling his mouth. It was not, strictly speaking, beer in the sense that he’d seen Yugi’s grandfather drink beer sometimes during quiet evenings at home. This was more like extremely watery oatmeal, liquid and solid in a manner for which he had no context. Yet at that moment he knew,  _ knew _ , in a rush of, not memory, but pseudo-memory, that he had had it before. Had it many times, in some half dreaming space between moments, pseudo-memory of nourishment, of a taste burned into his bones over thousands of generations.

He backed off, swallowing hastily, and struggling to reorient. His mind felt as liquid as the beer, unmoored and uncertain.

“Better?” said Ryou.

He looked at the young man, trying to focus, to ground himself. Ryou’s face, still scalded red by the sun, his soft brown eyes searching and solemn.

“Yes,” he heard himself say. “Yes, that is better. Thank you.”

As he sat beside Ryou and broke bread that tasted of desert sand, he wondered, uneasily, just how many secrets lay beneath this land-not-land. And as they played this game, if it was even that, how many dimensions of himself might reveal themselves.

And whether he would truly want to know them.


	5. Manger

Yugi opened his mouth, as if to ask what Bakura was talking about, but at that moment, a phone rang, a deafening jangle echoing through the flat.

Yugi flinched at the sound. Bakura did as well but managed to turn the movement into a backhanded swipe across his own cheek.

The phone rang again.

“Uh,” said Yugi. “Is there someone else here?”

Bakura didn’t answer. He rose from the table, reaching to touch the knife that he’d stuffed into his coat pocket as he did so. The phone was a cream-colored wall mount, hanging just to the right of the stove. He stared at the ringing object, a creeping sense of dread crawling up his spine.

It was a unique feeling; he was used to being the one  _ causing _ dread.

Yugi stepped up behind him, peering around Bakura to look at the phone.

“Bakura?” he said.

“Shut up,” Bakura said, reflexively, but without malice. He listened, in the empty moments between rings, straining to hear…

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

“What?” said Yugi, but before Bakura could respond—or process just  _ what _ he thought he was talking about with all this “we” nonsense—a sound split the air, grinding, mechanical, and the blade of a fucking  _ chainsaw _ erupted through the drywall beside them.

“Run!” shouted Bakura.

To his credit, Yugi didn’t hesitate. He bolted for the door of the flat like his obnoxious hair was on fire. Bakura legged it after him, cursing as behind them he heard the whining screech of a saw blade carving its way through inexpensive construction materials. They burst into the carpeted hallway and made for the stairwell.

“Who the fuck is that?” shouted Yugi. In the part of his mind not busily constructing survival plans, Bakura was mildly impressed; he hadn’t known the little bastard could say fuck.

He was also a hell of a lot faster than he looked, Bakura had to strain to keep up. Must have been all the years of outrunning bullies.

“I think his name is Jacob,” Bakura shouted back. They hit the end of the corridor and slammed their way through the fire door, which ejected them into a dim stairwell, lit by sickly green fluorescent lights that flickered threateningly, as though they’d extinguish at any moment.

_ Fucking perfect. _

He whirled in the doorway and snatched a card from his pocket, breathing a reflexive prayer to a god that no one had worshiped for a thousand years. He launched the Man-Eater Bug into the hallway and slammed the door behind them. That should give the bastard a nasty surprise.

Yugi was already on the next landing and Bakura dropped himself over the edge of the railing to catch up, nearly managing to dislocate his shoulder as he caught himself. Yugi stopped to haul him back over the railing, before actually latching onto Bakura’s wrist and dragging him down the stairwell.

“Who the hell is Jacob?” Yugi said. His touch made Bakura’s ephemeral skin crawl, but he felt the distant echo of chainsaw slicing through chitin and decided it wasn’t worth it to waste time wrenching free. It had taken down his Bug, not a good sign.

“You’ve never watched any of his movies?” said Bakura. “And on a less pointless note, do you have your deck with you?”

“Movies—?” Yugi’s brows furrowed and he narrowly avoided missing a step—if he broke an ankle Bakura was  _ not _ waiting for him. “You mean  _ Jason _ ? Jason like the guy in the hockey mask from the Friday the 13th movies?”

“Jacob, Jason, what does it matter?” said Bakura, nearly bouncing off the wall of the stairwell as Yugi took a turn at speed, latching onto the railing with his free hand to help them maintain their momentum. “Do you have your deck with you or not?”

“Yes, yes I’ve got it,” said Yugi.

“Good,” said Bakura. “Because he just took down my Man-Eater Bug and I’m thinking we’re going to need something with a bit more firepower.”

Again. with the fucking “ _ we”. _

“Isn’t the Man-Eater Bug a one-hit kill?”

Somewhere above them, a door slammed open with a thunderous clang.

“Tell him that,” snapped Bakura. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not in a duel.”

“Us not being in a duel doesn’t explain why we’re being chased by a  _ horror movie monster _ ,” said Yugi. “Also, I don’t think that Jason uses a chainsaw.”

“And I don’t think I care,” snarled Bakura. “I’ve a hunch that ghosts and fiends aren’t going to do the job, so fucking  _ do something _ .”

“On it,” said Yugi, skidding to a halt and turning, tugging Bakura off balance, his hand going to his pocket. Bakura had just a moment to wonder if the kid had ever actually summoned a monster that wasn’t a hologram when the central space of the stairwell suddenly filled with claws and blue scales.

The Winged Dragon bared its fangs and bellowed—nearly blowing out Bakura’s eardrums as the cry echoed in the narrow stairwell—and launched a massive fireball straight up into the space above them. The temperature around them skyrocketed as the shaft of the stairwell turned into a makeshift chimney and Bakura bolted, yanking Yugi down the stairs and away from any potential blowback.

“Hurry!” he said. “I’m pretty sure fire doesn’t slow him down forever!”

“What?” shouted Yugi, his fingers digging into Bakura’s forearm. “My ears are still ringing. I don’t remember if Jason hates fire, I only saw one movie because of mom. Where should we go?”

Giving up any attempts at logical progression, Bakura dragged the boy in the direction of what instinct told him was the door to the roof. That, and the sign in English helpfully marked “Roof Access”.

The door, however, vomited them into an empty alleyway, barely lit by flickering streetlights. It was scattered with trash and smelled faintly of urine, and other, more sinister scents. In short, it was exactly the sort of place Bakura would have chosen to ambush someone.

Which meant they had a decently good chance of  _ being _ ambushed in it. As much as Bakura would have liked to hold himself up as the pinnacle of knife-wielding serial killers, he had to allow that he probably wasn’t the only one in existence.

They ran.

The streets were desolate, dense with creeping fog. A light rain was falling, turning the asphalt slick and black as crude oi,l and soaking into Bakura’s coat with a grim, inexorable promise that he was going to be freezing his ass off later. He didn’t recognize the city; it had shades of London about it, but no landmarks that he could recall from his landlord’s memories. Still, it looked like the sort of place that might disgorge a werewolf or a horde of zombies if given the opportunity.

“Where are we going?” said Yugi. His voice was quiet, but the sudden noise in the muted fog made it seem as if he’d shouted.

“ _ I _ am going to find a way out of here,” said Bakura, shrugging off the icy fingers that seemed to have permanently wrapped themselves around his spine with a gesture somewhere between anger and annoyance. He realized belatedly that Yugi was still gripping his arm and twisted free, unreasonably irritated with himself for reasons he didn’t care to examine. “ _ You  _ can do whatever pops into your spikey, little head.”

Yugi blinked at him and patted at his hair with the hand Bakura had divested from himself. The spot where his hand had been was rapidly cooling, leaving behind a patch that somehow felt colder than the rest of Bakura, misty rain notwithstanding. “Maybe we should find someplace out of the rain first?”

As if on cue, the clouds opened up, dousing them with icy water, drenching them in moments. The dull roar of the raindrops was deafening, and though the sudden deluge was rapidly clearing the fog, the visibility wasn’t improving any. Not bothering to answer, Bakura jogged over to one of the storefronts and tried the handle.

He’d expected it to be locked, was even looking forward to kicking it down, but the knob didn’t even turn. Startled, he ran his fingers along the edges of the lintel, searching for a crack he could pry into or a latch he could jimmy.

It wasn’t a real door, only painted. Automatically he looked to the window beside it, only to realize that now, at this proximity, he could see that it was a painting too, a cheerful, hyper realistic display of flowers clustered around a “For Sale” sign. He scowled at a painted peace lily.

“Here!” shouted Yugi over the sound of the rain and he turned. The young man was standing before a chained and bolted hurricane fence. He was half bent, examining a corner where the chain links had disconnected and peeled away, leaving behind a gap in the fencing. The crude sign above the chain and padlock read: “Junkyard. Danger. Do Not Enter.”

In terms of bright ideas this seemed only slightly above insulting Seto Kaiba’s dueling skills to his face, but the rain, as if in answer, poured harder, the droplets blinding him, pinging off his coat like bullets. He crossed the street and crouched to crawl in behind Yugi.

The junkyard was a jungle of looming shadows, wraiths of long-deceased cars lurking in the gloom. There was a car dangling from a magnetic crane, frozen above them like an automotive angel of death, and the place reeked of gasoline and spilled motor oil.

Yugi had stopped next to a convertible, some shade of red with large fins and a bright, chrome strip down the side. Bakura circled it, noted the chrome flanges protruding from the hood, the ornament mounted on the front like small, chrome bull’s horns, the sharp “V” on the grill. It didn’t look to be in particularly good shape, but that was encouraging; a showroom ready car in a place like this probably meant trouble.

He tried the door.

It opened easily and he peered inside. Leather seats, in bold red and white, wear marks where the driver would have sat. He entered, slid across the seat, and felt Yugi crawl in behind him and shut the door. The noise of the rain lessened to a dull hum of drops on the fabric of the roof.

“No key,” said Yugi. He was examining the dashboard, feeling around the huge steering wheel.

“Probably no petrol,” said Bakura. He checked the glove compartment, but it was empty. The inside of the car was, if possible, even colder than the driving rain and he could feel the convulsions, involuntary shivers beginning to wrack his body. Or his landlord’s body. Neither of them had an excess of body fat. Bakura had spent most of his life starving and his landlord—

He cut off the thought before it could go any further. It wasn’t his business what his fool of a vessel got up to, unless it interfered directly with his plans.

“Are you alright?” said Yugi, startling him from his resentful reflections. The boy was shivering too, little tremors that tensed through his shoulders. His hair was partially plastered to his skull, face cast in shadow, his large eyes weirdly luminous in the dim light from the distant street lamps.

“Why?” said Bakura, managing to keep his teeth from chattering. “Worried?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” said Yugi.

Bakura laughed, overloud and close in the echo chamber of the car’s cabin. “Because I’d shred your precious pharaoh’s soul into so many fragments not even you could put it back together if I could.”

Yugi’s mouth went tight. “I won’t let you hurt him,” he said, and there was something beneath the words that made the empty space in Bakura’s chest snarl like a rabid dog. “But that doesn’t mean I want to see you hurt either.”

“You’re about three millennia too late then,” said Bakura.

“I know,” said Yugi, and the resignation in his voice made Bakura want to punch him. He was too cold, too connected to this body, phantom nerves scraped raw with the memory of adrenaline, phantom skin buzzing with the alien echo of being touched. The silence congealed between them like cooling fat.

“Will you tell me?” said Yugi, barely audible over the rain. “Tell me about what happened? Tell me about where you come from?”

Bakura stared at the dashboard. He wanted to throw himself out the side of the car, wanted to stay silent, wanted to tell Yugi to fuck right off.

He opened his mouth and began to speak.


	6. Side Story: Grilling With Seto Kaiba

Seto Kaiba looked slowly from Isis to Malik—still in Mazaki’s body—and leaned forward over the little desk someone had presumably set up in the cabin that had been fitted into a makeshift office, lacing his fingers together.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You expect me to believe that you,” here he indicated Malik with a little jerk of his head, “aren’t actually Anzu Mazaki, but instead Malik Ishtar,  _ even though _ Malik Ishtar is currently, at this very moment participating in my tournament? As in, I saw Malik Ishtar walking down the hallway on deck two with my own eyes not thirty minutes ago?”

“Yes,” said Isis. Malik had to hand it to her; no one could express such conviction about something that sounded like utter bullshit quite like his sister.

Kaiba eyed her and said nothing.

Isis folded her arms in that way she did when she was about to launch into a speech about Destiny. “Kaiba, you yourself have looked three thousand years into the past, on  _ multiple _ occasions might I add, and still you doubt that there is more at work here than what you see?”

“If you’re referring to our duel...there is a logical explanation for what happened.”

Malik threw up Mazaki’s arms. “ _ How? _ How is there a logical explanation for what happened? Unless you make a habit of dosing with hallucinogens before you duel!”

“You don’t know that I  _ don’t _ , Mazaki.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Malik grabbed at their hair. “And we told you, I’m not Mazaki! Would Mazaki talk like a goddamn foreigner?”

“I don’t presume to know what sort of speech habits you’ve picked up from that delinquent, Katsuya.”

“Oh my god,” said Malik. “We’re going to die. We’re all going to get carved to bits by dark magic and it’s going to be all the pharaoh’s fault.”

Isis gave him a look. “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“Because he skipped out on his hero duties and left us to try and reason with this asshole!” Malik gestured in frustration at Kaiba, who remained unmoved.

“Kaiba,” said Isis. “Regardless of what you believe, you wish to face Yugi again, yes?”

“I  _ will _ face Yugi again,” said Kaiba, and Malik had a distinct impression of just how insufferable  _ he _ must have sounded when he was making proclamations. Maybe he should start shooting first and making speeches later.

“My brother currently stands between you and your desire,” said Isis, and Malik had the sinking sensation that she was trying to sound  _ flirtatious _ . “Malik has engineered a series of events to remove Yugi from the tournament, indeed perhaps from existence, and defeating him is the only means to restore your rival.”

Kaiba’s eyebrows knitted. Malik groaned with impatience. “She means Yugi’s gone, dumbass, and you have to beat Malik Ishtar to get him back.”

By the gods, he hoped having to talk about himself in the third person wasn’t going to give him a complex. Well, more of one.

Kaiba leapt to his feet, knocking over his office chair. “Yugi’s  _ gone? _ How? We’re four thousand feet up and no air transport docks on this blimp without my permission!” He tapped the microphone in his collar. “I want a ship-wide search for Yugi Muto, implemented immediately!”

“Yugi did not use air transport,” said Isis. “Please believe me when I say as the only remaining contestant with a God card other than my brother, you are the one in the best position to get him back.”

Kaiba scrutinized her. “So, you’re saying if I defeat Malik Ishtar, Yugi will suddenly come out of whatever closet he’s hiding in?”

Malik made a valiant effort to turn the laugh that wanted to escape into a cough.

“Yes,” said Isis, admirably serene.

The mic in Kaiba’s collar blinked and he tapped it. “Sir,” said a tinny voice, almost inaudible. “We regret to inform you that Yugi Muto is nowhere on the premises.”

Kaiba’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t bother answering the message. “Explain.”

“We  _ have _ ,” snarled Malik, though with Mazaki’s vocal cords it was about half as intimidating as he would have preferred. Kaiba looked unimpressed. 

“My brother is correct,” said Isis. “It is quite simple. You defeat Malik Ishtar, you’ll have the opportunity to defeat Yugi Muto once again. You do not?” She gave an elegant shrug. “Well, I suppose you care nothing for the fate of the world, but at that point it will matter little.”

“You’re right about my not caring about the fate of the world nonsense you’re babbling about,” said Kaiba. “But I do care about the fate of my company, and until I find a way to move it elsewhere, it exists in the world too.” He crossed his arms and stared down at them in a way that Malik assumed was supposed to send employees scurrying in terror. As the expression lacked both the weight of three millennia of tradition and the risk of actual, physical torture, Malik simply squared Mazaki’s shoulders and glared back at him.

Isis coughed and nudged him. Startled, he glanced at her and she made a vague, pointed gesture of lowering her shoulders. Mystified, he ignored her and glared again at Kaiba.

“So fine,” said Kaiba. “I’ll play your little game. I’ll beat Malik Ishtar in a duel, since I was planning on it anyway.” He grinned, the expression of one who looked as if they only had the vaguest idea of what one did with their facial muscles. “And then I’ll face Yugi with two god cards at my command and wipe the floor with him.”

  
_ We are so screwed,  _ thought Malik, with a kind of fascinated resignation.  _ So deeply, thoroughly, screwed. _


	7. Diamonds

The gates of the citadel were, thankfully, not shut when they arrived. The sandy courtyard around the palace was eerily peaceful, lined with trees and plants. He didn’t recognize any of them, but Ryou helpfully named them as they passed, in the well-practiced tone of one who’d learned at a parent’s knee.

There was a shallow pool close to the open promenade of columns that led further into the palace and Ryou paused to touch the wispy head of a green plant sprouting from the water.

“I never got a chance to try one of these when I was traveling with Father,” he said, sounding a little wistful. “But I don’t know where we could scrub them clean and I can’t imagine they’d taste very good raw.”

“What are they?” he said, reaching out to capture the spreading, umbrella-like structure at the top of the hardy stock. It tickled his palm.

Ryou cocked his head at him, bemused. “Papyrus,” he said.

He stared at the unassuming plant, caught a little flat-footed. Here again, something he was expected to know,  _ did _ know, if he searched the unknowing, unquantifiable core of himself, but evaporated like mist in the dawn when he tried to catch it in his fingers.

Memory, not ancient but recent, an echo of recollection not his own; Yugi’s grandfather curled in a well-worn armchair, bottle of beer braced on one knee. A distant expression on wrinkled features, ruminating, spiraling reflections of the very old.

_ “It’s got no room for the scattered and sown, this land,” he’d said. “It’ll take you in, accept you as its own, but there’s no understanding for those of us always looking to the horizon, back to blood. It was my mother who named me, for peace and tranquility, maybe as a warding, against the eternal schism that kept me coming back to the desert.” _

_ He’d looked at Yugi then, Yugi and him, both of them together, one and separate, peering past his grandson’s eyes into the ancient, eldritch glint he’d surely seen behind them. “It called to me, you know?” he’d said. “That dark place, beneath the Valley of Kings. Like I’d been there before. Like I needed to go back. Needed to finish something, something gravely important. A task, given to me by someone I couldn’t remember. And in there, under the sand and soil and grave must, I thought I saw...” He’d shaken his head. “I say it now and it sounds insane. Time for bed, I think. Your mother will have my head for keeping you up too late.” _

A hand on his elbow startled him from his ruminations. “Are you alright?” said Ryou.

He realized he was still standing, frozen, his hand on the papyrus plant, and withdrew. Ryou’s fingers rested on his arm, warm, but a different kind of warmth than the baking heat around them. The familiar, gentle warmth that Yugi always emanated, a strength of spirit that bolstered him after the exhaustion of a magical struggle. He found himself leaning into it, drawing on it, didn’t even realize he was doing it until Ryou stumbled slightly, other hand rising instinctively to brace his weight.

He froze. The young man’s eyes were wide, chapped lips parted. “What was that?”

His brows knitted. “I’m afraid I don’t follow?”

Ryou’s fingers dug slightly into his shoulders and he had the sudden, dizzying recognition of his own minimal height. “There, that. It feels like you’re...pulling, or something.”

“Ah, my apologies, that would be my, well, my magic I suppose.” It was strange to attempt to articulate the instinctual but unremembered. “Is it unwelcome? Did you not mean to offer…?”

Ryou frowned. “Offer? What do you mean?”

He paused, started to withdraw, but Ryou resisted, went with him, like clumsy dance partners. The young man trod on his foot and he hissed.

“Sorry,” Ryou resituated them, hands sliding to grip his forearms, and then his hands. His phantom heart was suddenly pounding.

Ryou’s mouth took on a determined set and he felt a faint surge of heat beneath the young man’s palms, tickling across his skin. It was sudden, startling, like a crashing wave rather than the steady swell he experienced when Yugi held him and he jumped but didn’t let go.

“You can feel that,” said Ryou, fascinated.

“Yes, but—” He twitched as another wave rose. “Easy,” he gasped. “You don’t have to push, you’re a Vessel, not a blunt instrument.”

Ryou blinked in confusion and he belatedly realized that might have sounded very rude. But Ryou merely pursed his mouth and looked thoughtful.

“He...called me that,” said Ryou, very slowly. “Just once, at the beginning. After it was always ‘landlord’, but there was a moment… When I first sensed him there, first realized I wasn’t mad, that he wasn’t a creation of my own mind. When he came pouring in, like...ink in an inkwell, shadow made flesh, and I had a second of ‘Yes, this is right, this is good’.” He shook his head. “Things changed after that, obviously, but I never forgot it.”

Something in the core of him twisted, a moment of mirroring, recognition of a shared experience. The selfish, unnamable joy of pouring into a welcoming body, anchored and whole in a way he couldn’t ever remember being. The strange knowledge that in this they had been the same: pharaoh and thief. The memory of how easily Yugi’s wonder and delight had turned to fear, how easily he’d crossed boundaries that should have never been crossed.

_ You apologized. Yugi forgave you. The thief never did. He only used his Vessel. _

But had he? He assumed that Ryou’s terror and pain meant nothing to the Spirit of the Ring, but was that quite true? If they were twinned as closely as Yugi was—had been, no he mustn’t think like that—to him, would the thief have been able to ignore it? Or would he have been compelled to action, as he himself had been, so many times, striking out against those with evil intent, moved by the cries of a heart that beat in tandem with his own?

He lowered his head. “I didn’t grasp the full implications of it, when we first merged. I took control, Yugi ceded it.” The acknowledgment left a bitter taste on his tongue, nestled next to the flavors of beer and sand. “It was wrong, what he did to you, what...we did. A Vessel isn’t merely a container, it influences the contents, flavors them, uplifts them. When Yugi and I...” It should have felt obscene to speak of it, a violation, but here was one with the closest understanding. “When we fought together, were together, truly together, it was like music, rhythmic and symphonic, different than either of us could have played alone.” He looked back up at Ryou. “Whatever he said to you; remember this. The Vessel endures, even when the contents spill, even when they sour, when they rot. It can be broken, cracked, repaired, reforged, but it will  _ always _ outlast what we pour into it. Do you grasp my meaning?”

Ryou’s eyes were wide and determined, brown lit gold by the desert sun. “I want to know what it means,” he said. “Will you show me?”

He hesitated. He himself didn’t quite know what he’d meant. It should have felt a betrayal, the offer to what? Join with another? Offer to soothe the hurt left behind by rough treatment, like the thin lines of gold that riddled the single teacup that Yugi’s mother kept on her top shelf? He thought of Yugi, the gentle pulse of empathy in his heart when he looked at Ryou, the shy swell of desire not so different from when he looked at Anzu. 

“Yes,” he heard himself say. “Yes, I will. But not here.”

* * *

The interior of the palace was cool and dim, and a refreshing breeze played between the pillars, bringing relief to aching skin and eyes. They entered the cavernous space of the main hall, shoes clicking on stones.

“When my father brought me to the ruins of Amarna,” said Ryou, his voice echoing. “I thought I had never seen anything more desolate.” He paused, head thrown back as he regarded the distant stone roof. “It reminded me of a carcass, scavenged by the desert. But this…” He fell silent, so long it seemed he’d no intention of continuing. “It’s stranger, to see a place like this recreated in such fresh, exacting detail, and yet completely empty.” He frowned. “More like a model than a real city.”

He squelched a shiver, glancing off into the shadows between the pillars, half-certain he’d see some lurking shadow.

_ Lurking shadow? The only lurking shadow here is you. _

They ventured deeper, scouting the edges of the hall. There was a low dais at one end, with a stone throne perched atop it, and the walls, carved and painted with a variety of murals, images that Yugi knew, but he did not. Images recreated on the pages of modern books, sketched by Yugi’s grandfather’s wrinkled hand. Anubis, kneeling before his great scales, Horus and Set locked in magical combat, Ra riding his boat across an ocean of watery chaos to meet the serpent Apophis. He stared, half-hoping that they might mean something, but felt only the dizzying, frustrating, pseudo-mnemonic impression of before, like sand-worn reliefs on a lone remaining stela.

Ryou let out a curious sound, and he turned to see that the young man had approached one of the walls and was examining it with great interest, squinting as though against poor vision. He followed and realized as he neared that the images blurred and bled, the finer details, the hieroglyphs fuzzed in a way that made them impossible to make out.

“Odd,” said Ryou. “I wonder…” He chewed his lip, lost in thought.

“Wonder what?” he said.

“He made this world,” said Ryou slowly. “There’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think I ever considered what it would mean, a world made from memory.”

“How do you figure?” he said.

“Think about it,” said Ryou. “Memory is imperfect. Some details become fixed in our minds, others fade, or are tossed out as unimportant. Maybe that bakery smelled of bread because it was a bakery that he visited. And if he couldn’t read the hieroglyphs…” He frowned.

His eyes widened and he stared at the wall, the row of blurred glyphs marching beneath Anubis’s bare feet. “You mean the places in this place he hasn’t been to, or the details that would have had no meaning to him, they’ll be absent.”

Ryou nodded. “I wonder if we’d tried to enter any of the other buildings on the way here if we’d even have been able to do so.”

“Do you think that they’ll form a path? The fully rendered places? A path out of here?”

“It’s possible,” said Ryou. “But I still hold that the exit must be in Kul Elna. Which means there’s an item here we need, or a puzzle we have to solve. Something we must learn.”

Their search of the main hall proved unfruitful, as did their exploration of the remainder of the lower level. Many times, as Ryou had predicted, they ran headlong into doors which would not open, or halls that stretched into darkness only to abruptly end and spit them out at the point they’d begun to venture down them.

It was gone sunset by the time they reached a series of rooms on the upper floor that Ryou described as living quarters. They saw no one, but as the sun sank several oil lamps, in bronze and clay and alabaster, sprang to life in the rooms through which they wandered.

_ Were these my quarters? Did I eat here? Sleep here? Strange that Bakura would know them better than I. _

Ryou stopped to examine a polished bronze mirror the size of a platter in one of the larger bedrooms, moving his head back and forth as though pondering the way the light reflected off it. He came up behind the young man, reached out to touch a series of small clay pots upon the low table on which the mirror sat. He dipped his finger into the mouth of one and it came out black.

“Kohl,” murmured Ryou. “Decoration and necessity, I suppose. Keeps the sun out of your eyes.”

On impulse, he reached out, used his finger to draw a dark line on the soft lower lid under Ryou’s eye. The pink, scalded shade of his cheeks seemed lost in the flickering lamplight and the young man closed his eyes as he reached the end of the lid, cradling his cheek a moment before repeating the mark on the other side.

Ryou opened his eyes, smiled, and reciprocated. His fingers were soft and gentle, different than Yugi’s touch but leaving the same, tingling contrails. 

“A man says this speech when he is clean, shod in white sandals, painted with eye-paint…” said Ryou softly, and he turned to catch the blackened tips of the young man’s fingers against his lips. The compound was bitter, metallic.

Ryou’s breath hitched and he tilted his head up to meet his, mouths together, dark and oily. His free hand fisted in Ryou’s coat. They broke and merged and broke again.

“Does your knowledge of archaeology extend to whether this place has a bath?” he said, panting.

Ryou laughed against his mouth, soft and breathy. “Let’s find out.”


	8. Cat's Eye

Time was fluid, dilated inside the liminal space of the car. Bakura talked and talked until he thought his throat would give out. With Yugi a barely visible shadow, it was like being alone, confessing to a vast abyss where no one could hear him or care what he said. He spoke of the desert, the shadows, his village, his mother. He did not speak of the demon. He spoke in spirals, memory morphing to towering rage to blind grief and back again; over and over until it petered out and he fell silent.

He looked at Yugi.

The boy was crying. Not sobbing or sniffling, but silent, steady droplets of tears tracking down his face, staring out into the rain, his mouth set into a firm line.

Bakura actually considered rolling down the car window and vaulting out of it.

“You must have been so scared,” said Yugi finally. His voice was as hoarse as Bakura’s, a squeezed hoarseness, larynx drawn tight by grief.

“Maybe,” said Bakura, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Pressure on his wrist; Yugi had reached out and taken his hand, chill fingers curling around his palm. He stared at the jumble of fingers, half-numbly wondering if they belonged to him. Considered ripping his hand away, but let it be. Let the boy comfort himself thinking there was anything left in Bakura that would respond to touch.

And then, so slightly that at first, he wasn’t sure he’d felt anything at all, a strange, tickling warmth spread up his forearm, as if he’d stuck his hand in a hot bath. He jerked in reflex but Yugi reached out with his other hand, gently enfolding Bakura’s with both of his own. “What are you doing?”

Yugi scrunched up his face slightly and wiped eyelashes thick with tears against the damp shoulder of his own jacket. “I don’t know how to describe it. Does it help?”

That was an interesting question. The warmth was spreading up through his shoulder, easing the shivers that had become background noise. It left behind an acute absence of stimulation and Bakura shuddered. “I don’t know what you mean. What  _ is _ it?”

Yugi chewed his lip, thinking. “It’s like…” he began. “It’s like opening up a space in here,” he awkwardly tapped at his chest with his chin, “and inviting someone in.”

Bakura stared at him. It  _ did _ feel rather like someone opening a door on a cold night, leaning in against the wall as warmth seeped out into the air around him. It made him want to crawl inside the space, nest within it and sleep. It felt as secure as a stone fortress but warm as his landlord’s mattress. 

_ Vessel _ , he thought numbly.  _ He’s a Vessel. How in the hell is he doing this? _

He’d known of course, in an abstract sense, that the mind and heart that could hold up under the Puzzle had the strength to move mountains, but it was one thing to know and another to have that power turned on him. The heat was bonfire bright, but it didn’t burn. Instead it buoyed beneath him, soothing away the exhaustion of summoning and from the inconvenience of emotions that he hadn’t managed to erase despite three thousand years of practice.

Yugi scooted across the seat towards him and Bakura stiffened, eyeing him. Yugi paused, watching him, his breath faintly fogging in the chill air, but when Bakura didn’t object he pressed in close, releasing one of his hands and—without a hint of self-consciousness—wrapping an arm around Bakura. He tucked his head against Bakura’s shoulder and squeezed gently.

Bakura stared through the windshield at the water sheeting down the glass. He could hear Yugi breathing in the dark, feel warm air on his neck. He found his own breath matching it, a strange, soothing synchronization.

“Did you do this for the pharaoh?” he said, because he was incapable of keeping the cutting words inside him.

“Sometimes,” said Yugi, unperturbed. “When he’d let me.”

The thought curdled inside him like rotting milk. But it wasn’t the knowledge that the pharaoh might have snatched some modicum of comfort, it was an envious, covetous resentment that he hadn’t warranted the same.

“Must be nice,” he said bitterly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Yugi. “And if I know anything about Ryou at all, he would have done the same. If you’d let him.”

He opened his mouth to scoff, then paused. A strange memory tugged at the edges of his mind. Pouring into that bright space after millennia of waiting, excitement sharp and cutting and realizing yes-yes this is right; this fits. His landlord’s fear, no, it hadn’t been fear at first, wonder, fascination at the way their minds cleaved to each other. The first time he’d reached out, whispers in the dark, a lonely youth reaching back, the first time he stretched to fill his landlord’s skin.

The first time Ryou had shared one of his nightmares. A tipping point, shared grief offered in clumsy child’s hands. Rage and rage and resentment and  _ how dare you how dare you presume how dare you offer me your weak pathetic pain how DARE— _

Nausea roiled, a dizzying dissonance, and for the first time he wondered if the gentle boy who loved ghosts and his dead sister had not been comparing their pain, but offering understanding, a shared experience, a world ended in ice instead of fire.

“That boy has always had too much love for monsters,” he said.

Yugi hugged him tighter. They breathed in the dark and watched the windows fog.

He thought Yugi had fallen asleep, but then he made a quiet sound, nuzzling into the damp curtain of his hair, Ryou’s hair, soft cheek rubbing against his own. His stomach gave a strange lurch, anxious but not unpleasant, and his body tingled with warmth. He felt hot breath and chapped lips on his cheek and turned his head on impulse, thieving instinct.

Yugi’s mouth tasted like rainwater. He startled slightly but instead of protesting, pushed up into him, fitting their mouths clumsily together. His arm loosened, hand climbing to sink into Bakura’s hair. It was wet and awkward and strange and Bakura never wanted to stop doing it.

Yugi squirmed, hiking himself up on top, changing the angle to he could tip back Bakura’s head and keep kissing him. Bakura dug his fingers into his sides and ground upwards with some vague notion that this was good, yes, very good. His knee struck the dashboard, a jarring jolt that he barely noticed as Yugi pushed back down against him.

Yugi’s tongue was in his mouth, leg between his, when the radio clicked to life.

A man’s voice filled the cabin, English, a repetitive acapella croon that sounded strangely familiar, yet nothing at all like the music Ryou sometimes heard emanating from a classmate’s Walkman during free period in the schoolyard.

_ “Little bitty pretty one. Come on and talk-a to me.” _

Yugi froze against him. Very, very slowly, he looked over his shoulder at the dashboard.

“Bakura,” he said. He sounded utterly quiet and controlled. “Do you remember if Ryou ever watched a movie about a car?”

Bakura blinked at him, trying to restart his brain amid the sudden, disorienting wash of hormone soup. “What are you talking about? All your movies have cars in them.”

“A haunted car?” said Yugi, delicately. His eyes still fixed on the dashboard and his fingers were digging into Bakura’s shoulders.

_ “Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mm” _

Bakura peered around him, mystified. “Yeah I think there was one. Catherine or Charlotte or something?”

“You mean Christine?” Yugi’s voice strained.

“Maybe?”

Bakura had only a moment to register that Yugi was scrambling over him and flinging open the far door when the steering wheel surged up and struck him in the stomach. He wheezed, crumpling as all the breath exited his body at once. He rolled, clawing at the leather of the seats, only to be squashed against the backrest again. His vision dark and confused, he felt hands latch around his wrists, dragging him towards the open door just as the engine snarled to life.

Hitting the soaked gravel, Bakura struggled to his feet. The rain was so thick he could barely see. Yugi was shouting something he couldn’t hear over the roar of the engine. Wheels spun, pelting them with small stones and Yugi yanked his wrist as they charged deeper into the junkyard.

They’d barely squeezed between two abandoned economy car husks when the massive car plowed into them with a deafening crunch of crushed metal.

“There!” To his surprise, Yugi skidded to a halt and flung open the door to a boxy, rectangular car with a circular hood ornament. “Get in!”

Bakura circled the car and just managed to fling himself into the passenger’s seat as Yugi turned the ignition and the car’s engine rumbled. Music soared to life from the dashboard cassette player, a jaunty tune and a man bellowing in English about a bad moon rising. Yugi threw the car in reverse, grinding through at least two gears as he did so, and spun the wheel.

They surged backwards, knocking into another car with a sickening crunch. Headlights lit the night and Bakura got a brief, blinding glimpse of the red car bearing down on them for a T-bone collision that would turn them into T-bone steak.

Yugi floored it.

“What are you doing?” shouted Bakura, as the murderous car just missed them. “The gate’s locked! Also, I fucking know you can’t drive!”

Yugi ignored him, sideswiping multiple cars as he navigated towards the exit. Behind them, Bakura could hear the red car smashing through the graveyard of automotive corpses in its quest for blood.

At last they reached a clear patch a ways distant from the exit. Even through the rain, Bakura could see that it was indeed locked. Yugi stomped the brake and they whiplashed to a halt.

Yugi revved the engine.

“Oh, fuck no,” said Bakura.

“Take the wheel!” shouted Yugi over the deafening guitar. He was rolling down his window, rain and chill air splattering them both. “And buckle up!”

“Have you lost your mind?” said Bakura, even as he clawed for the seatbelt. “We can’t break through those gates in this thing!”

Yugi laid on the accelerator. Bakura gripped the wheel and clenched his jaw so hard he thought it would crack.

But then Yugi’s hand was out the window, card between his fingers and the light of summoning split the night.

The car ramped the platform of the Catapult Turtle at speed and launched.

They hurtled through the night like a bullet, a weightless arc. Yugi was screaming, Bakura thought he might have been screaming, John Fogerty was singing that he could see trouble on the way.

They hit the street beyond with a tooth-rattling thud that sounded as if it had taken thirty years off the shocks and ground for half a block—narrowly avoiding plowing through a bank of parked cars—before they managed to stop. Bakura’s seatbelt felt like it had cut burning stripes across his body. They were both clutching the wheel in a death grip. The radio wailed merrily.

Yugi groped in vain at the cassette player before finally giving up and turning off the car. They sat in stunned silence for several moments.

Then Yugi let go of the wheel, grabbed Bakura, and kissed him hard.

Bakura was too shocked to do anything but let him.

After a couple of moments, Yugi pulled away, panting. His eyes were bright and warm and Bakura had the strange, sudden feeling like he’d been punched in the gut, except nothing at all like that, and he found himself staring, fighting the unwise urge to drag Yugi over to him and pick up where they’d left off.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Yugi, reaching for the key.

“How did you know this car would work?” said Bakura, because that was easier than stopping to consider just why he was having inappropriate feel— _ designs _ on the Vessel of the Pharaoh.

“I saw the shotgun in the backseat,” said Yugi. “Once you know the rules to a game, it’s easy to play.”

“Shot—” Bakura spun, twisting in his seatbelt, craning his neck painfully. The gun had slid onto the floorboards and he could barely reach it, but sure enough, an old school bolt-action shotgun. He could see a handful of shining shells spread across the carpet beneath the backseat. He squirmed, managed to hook the gun, and brought it up to sit in his lap. “Now that’s  _ much _ better.”

Yugi grinned at him and fired up the engine.


	9. Side Story: Isis’s Breakfast With Evil

Malik supposed, with a kind of weary resignation, that he should have expected this. After all, there was only one galley on board, and when you got right down to it, everyone had to eat.

“Oh hello,” said the Spirit of the Millennium Rod—or a fragmentation of Malik’s personality animated by Shadow magic, or an imaginary friend created by a desperately lonely and traumatized Malik animated by Shadow magic, or whatever combination of modern psychology and ancient cosmogony that had birthed the shadow piloting his body—straightening up from where he was bent over the open refrigerator door. He eyed the fire extinguisher Isis wielded and the metal spatula Malik had snatched off the wall on instinct. “I see you’ve traveled the land in search of new weapons to defeat me. Bravo.” He grinned broadly at Malik, exposing more teeth than Malik thought could reasonably fit into his own mouth. “Nice tits.”

“We’ll just be on our way,” said Malik, raising the spatula as he backed towards the door, but Isis held up a hand to stop him, the fire extinguisher dipping wildly without her second hand to support it.

“Wait,” she said. “Mal—brother,” she paused. “How should I address you?”

To his shock, the-thing-in-Malik’s-body looked momentarily doubtful. “Address me?”

“You are clearly not Malik,” she said, nodding in Malik-in-Mazaki’s-body’s direction. “Do you have a preferred form of address? A name, pronouns?”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body frowned, then grinned again. “You may call me, your destruction.”

Malik opened Mazaki’s mouth, but Isis shot him a look. “Alright, Your Destruction,” she said. “I—”

“No, wait,” said the-thing-in-Malik’s-body. “Not your destruction. My destruction. By which I mean your destruction.” His expression went a shade puzzled. “Destruction,” he said, as if feeling out the shape of the word.

“So just Destruction?” said Malik, unable to keep the sarcasm out his voice.

His eyes brightened. “Yes,” he declared. “Just Destruction. For the Pharaoh shall face justice, and then the world.”

_ I’m going to die at the hands of something that makes terrible puns, _ thought Malik.  _ I can’t say that I saw this coming. _

“Just Destruction,” said Isis, nodding her head in acknowledgment. She lowered the fire extinguisher to her side, or maybe she couldn’t keep it aloft any longer. She gestured at the refrigerator with her free hand. “Were you going to get something to eat?”

Malik and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body stared at her, Malik gaping in horror and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body looking like he’d forgotten why he’d opened the refrigerator in the first place. Then his brow furrowed, and he glanced back into the open refrigerator.

Isis set the fire extinguisher on the floor with a clunk. Malik considered going for it, but then she walked forward, with a single-minded bent he recognized from childhood.

“Here,” she said briskly. “Stand aside and I’ll make breakfast.”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body tensed, but then to Malik’s surprise, backed up to allow her access to the fridge. Malik half-expected her to slam the door open and sandwich his body against the wall, but instead she bent and plucked a quart of milk and a carton of eggs from inside it and backed up, bumping the door closed with a hip. She set the eggs and milk on the counter and rummaged in an upper cabinet. She withdrew a heavy electric waffle iron, a box of mix, and a mixing bowl. She retrieved a metal spoon from one of the drawers. She plugged in the waffle iron.

“Why don’t you find plates and utensils?” she said.

Malik and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body exchanged a look. Then without a word, they went to do so.

* * *

The scent of cooking waffles reminded Malik that Mazaki’s body hadn’t eaten in several hours. The-thing-in-Malik’s-body lurked near Isis in what was probably supposed to be a menacing way, but his dark cloak and electrified hair were out of place against the bright white and pale blue of the kitchen, and he just came across as vaguely creepy. 

At last Isis flipped the last waffle onto a paper plate, gave it a hearty drizzle of golden syrup, and distributed the plates.

“Sit,” she said. “Eat.”

Malik eyed the thing in his body—as hard as he tried, he just couldn’t make himself think of it with that  _ ridiculous _ name—for several moments. At last, the-thing-in-Malik’s-body snorted with derision and flopped into one of the chairs, metal legs scraping on the linoleum.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll play your pathetic game.”

He snatched up the waffle one-handed and took an enormous bite.

Malik suspected this was supposed to be some sort of intimidation tactic, but the-thing-in-Malik’s-body apparently had no notion of typical waffle consistency. The waffle instead flopped in his hand, releasing a stream of syrup down the front of his black shirt.

He cursed and dropped it back on the plate, springing to his feet. “You—!” he began, only to be cut off as Isis shoved a paper napkin under his nose.

“Table manners,” she said blithely, though the lines of her shoulders were rigid with tension.

“I could skin you alive,” the-thing-in-Malik’s-body hissed. “Skin you like I did  _ him _ , would you like that,  _ sister? _ ”

Malik gripped his own waffle and regretted having put down the spatula.

To her credit, Isis did not flinch. “You could,” she said. “Or you could sit down and finish your breakfast and we can discuss things like adults.”

“I’m not an adult!” snapped the-thing-in-Malik’s-body.

“Clearly,” said Malik, scathingly.

His own head whipped in his direction. “Neither are you!”

Malik scowled. “I am too! I run a multi-national crime syndicate!”

“ _ Ran _ a multi-national crime syndicate,” ground out Isis. “And regardless, you are both fully capable of  _ acting _ like adults.”

“I don’t have to act like adult to kill the Pharaoh!” said the-thing-in-Malik’s-body.

“You’re not going to kill the Pharaoh,” said Isis.

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body bared his teeth. “And who’s going to stop me? You? Without your Item? Or the more pathetic version of me with the boobs?”

Malik groaned. “Would you lay off? They’re not that big!”

“You’re not going to kill the Pharaoh because the Pharaoh is gone,” said Isis.

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body paused, brows furrowing. “I don’t follow.”

“She means the Pharaoh’s gone, genius!” said Malik. “Vanished. Evaporated. Sublimated into thin air. Which you should know because you’re the only one left on this cursed blimp with the power to make that happen!”

“I didn’t do it!” snapped the-thing-in-Malik’s-body. “Do you think I would have deprived myself the pleasure of peeling off the Pharaoh’s flesh while he—”

“Duly noted,” Isis interrupted. “But the fact remains.  _ Something _ happened to the Pharaoh. Which means you can expect to get no satisfaction from...whatever brutal scenario you’ve envisioned for yourself unless we find him.”

Malik glanced at her, confused. Was she trying to solicit help with finding the Pharaoh? From  _ him _ ?

For a moment he wondered if his enemies might not end up killing each other. A surprisingly elegant solution. If only it didn’t come with the contingency of him remaining trapped in the body of a teenage girl for the rest of forever.

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body frowned. “How do we find him then?”

Malik caught Isis’s bare moment of hesitation. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “But I can guarantee you will obtain no satisfaction from attempting to murder anyone else in this tournament.”

He snorted. “You don’t know that.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, bracing one booted ankle on his thigh. “And unlike him,” he gestured at Malik, “I never ‘attempt’ things like that.”

Malik bared Mazaki’s teeth and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body smirked at him.

Isis pinched the bridge of her nose. “I do know one thing,” she said. “The Necklace gifted me with one final vision, before I passed it to Yugi.”

Malik and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body snapped to look at her as one, and Malik felt a surge of shock. A vision? One she hadn’t mentioned?

“You,” said Isis, addressing only the-thing-in-Malik’s-body. “And Kaiba. Facing off in the dueling arena, the Rod in your hand, and Ra above you.”

Malik’s face lit, eyes gleaming, and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body reached on instinct for the Item tucked in the small of his back. “Is that so?” he purred.

“Yes,” said Isis, with the placid conviction that meant she was completely bullshitting someone.

_ Oh, fuck. _

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body eyed them both, clearly intrigued by this implicit proposal but suspicious just the same. “And how do you know it wasn’t the weakling?” he said.

Terrified that the-thing-in-Malik’s-body would read the truth on Isis’s face, Malik stood abruptly, sending his chair scraping along the linoleum. Both Isis and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body jumped, looking up at him. Malik planted Mazaki’s hands on the table, her bracelets jingling, and, trying to look casual, lowered Mazaki’s torso until it was nearly parallel with the tabletop.

“She’s right,” said Malik. “I’ve never been able to do the hard tasks, the bloody and unpleasant tasks. If she saw one of us facing Kaiba...it had to have been you.”

He shrugged Mazaki’s shoulders, sliding her wrists closer together, and was gratified to see the-thing-in-Malik’s-body’s gaze flick down to the swell of her breasts.

_ That’s it. Look at the boobs. Boobs. Boobs. Boobs. _

“And perhaps defeating Kaiba will draw the Pharaoh out of hiding,” said Malik. 

“You...may have a point,” said the-thing-in-Malik’s-body slowly, his tone edged. “For all the vastness...of Kaiba’s ego, he cannot defeat  _ me _ .”

“Of course not,” said Isis, sounding just the slightest bit strangled. “But surely you will find the experience titillat— _ stimulating _ ?”

Malik had to squelch the urge to glare at her.


	10. Fish In A Dish

After the modern glories of running water and brilliantly lit tile that he recalled from Yugi’s home, it was difficult to reconcile the cramped, nearly bare room into which Ryou ushered him as any sort of washroom. There was no furniture save several large clay ewers that upon investigation, contained water. He set the small clay lamp that Ryou had pressed upon him near the door, the tiny, dancing flame casting flickering shadows on the bricks of the walls. He turned and froze.

Ryou was undressing, shedding layers of bright and dark clothing like a snake casting its scales, revealing pale, nearly translucent skin. Ryou shucked his shirt and shook out the white cascade of his hair and while he’d always associated the image with impending danger, he found himself longing to touch it, run his fingers through the heavy curtain.

Ryou swept his hair to one side, bringing it over his shoulder and exposing the nape of his neck. He couldn’t help himself, he reached out, rested his fingers against warm, sweat-damp skin. Ryou shivered, leaned into him.

They worked on each other’s pants in a fumble of belts and buckles and zippers, dropping them and kicking free of the puddling fabric. He felt distantly aware of his own excitement, sharp spikes of stimulation as Ryou reached out and brought them skin-to-skin.

He thrust, helpless, into the enclosure of Ryou’s fist. He buried his face in the young man’s throat, shaking, and reached in return. The sounds Ryou made were electric, drugging, and he had a strange, dizzying mirrored sensation of entering and being entered, penetrating, and receiving, grasping, and being grasped, and strained in sudden desperation to kiss him.

Pleasure crested, sudden and shocking. He felt slickness drench his fingers and he sagged against Ryou, sending them stumbling back against the wall, just barely managing to keep from toppling. They breathed in the darkness, forehead to forehead, lips just touching.

His knees buckled and he sagged to the stone floor, Ryou’s hand catching in his hair, cradling his skull, combing through sweat-soaked strands. Ryou bent at the waist and kissed him on the forehead.

“Wait here,” Ryou whispered.

And then he was alone, damp skin tingling into dark void, his eyes shut as he waited, floated, knees numbing beneath him, face tilted up as if awaiting sunrise.

Water caught him, oceanic, electric, dousing him, quenching hot flesh. He gasped, felt it flood between his lips. He had the dizzying, pseudo-mnemonic image of swimming through dark waters, muscles straining against a chaotic sea as he was sucked into a whirlpool. Then Ryou’s hand gripped his shoulder, bringing him back to the moment, the body, to numbed muscles and water-clouded eyes.

“Are you alright?” said Ryou. “I should have warned you.”

He shook his head, sending droplets scattering. “I am fine,” he said. He struggled to his feet and nearly fell, legs tingling, and reached for one of the ewers of water. “Let me.”

They washed, mirroring each other’s movements. There was no soap, but he rinsed Ryou’s sunburnt skin again and again, watching as ranks of barely visible goosebumps rose in the wake of his hands.

Neither of them felt inclined to dress, so they drenched their clothing in the remainder of the bathwater and carried the soaked garments with them as they wandered naked through moonlit rooms. They circled back to the bedchamber they’d found and draped their clothing over furniture, an anachronistic bit of dishevelment that made Ryou laugh in a way that made his empty shadow of a heartache in his chest. A way which reminded him of Yugi.

Ryou seated himself on the floor and spread his hair forward across his shoulders and arms to encourage it to dry. He paced the room in endless circles, examining the little domestic objects, hoping that one of them might bring insight.

He was cradling a piece of worn, carved wood which he knew from Yugi’s memories to be a senet game piece, when Ryou spoke again.

“Did you see anything?” he said. “From the Necklace I mean? The future? Or the past?”

He tensed, fingers curling around the game piece. “I saw…” He stared blindly at his closed hand. “I saw death. Women, children, unimaginable violence. The air stank of heat and burning flesh.”

“The past then,” said Ryou, his voice weary.

“He called me Pharaoh,” he said. “The soldiers… they were organized, dressed the same. Like a royal guard.” His insides twisted. “Did I…?” He couldn’t say it, the words strangled off in his throat.

Ryou didn’t speak for a long time. “He used to say the Pharaoh took everything from him,” he said at last.

The phantom scent of charred meat curled in his nostrils and his gorge rose. He gripped the game piece until his fingers screamed in pain and drew in deep breaths.

“We should return to the village,” he said. “I think I know what needs to be done.”

“Rest first,” said Ryou, gently, but with a hint of steel in his tone. “In the morning we’ll make a final sweep of the palace and take some provisions with us for the trip back.”

The bed was strange in comparison to his memories of Yugi’s mattress, but they curled on it together, warm skin on warm skin. He counted Ryou’s breaths, listened to the silent hours while themselves away.

He was not used to sleeping, but he must have done so at some point, because suddenly the room was blushed pink with dawn sunlight, and Ryou breathed warm on his cheek. Ryou’s hair spread across them, and he stroked the thick waves. 

Ryou stretched and curled in a bit tighter. “Of course, you’d be an early riser.”

He lifted a lock of Ryou’s hair and kissed the end of it. “We can stay a moment longer. I got used to waiting on Yugi.”

“You’re fortunate to have him.”

“I could say the same of you and the thief.”

Ryou pushed his hair from his face and sat up against the strange slant of the bed. “I’m not sure he saw it that way.”

He bit his lip against the words he wanted to say. “We should prepare to leave, I suppose.”

There was a sense of crawling discomfort that came with donning his stiff and damp clothes, but he ignored it. Ryou suggested checking out the kitchens, and both of them were entirely unsurprised to find them represented in exacting detail. They scouted the space, eating dried dates and figs from the stores and stuffing their pockets. He wrapped some flat loaves of bread in a scrap of cloth they found, along with a bright, red pomegranate, and Ryou took a jar of beer.

It was infinitely worse to tread the baking road down which they’d come in reverse, and after only a brief time his eyes began to ache, even in the face of the kohl with which Ryou had insisted lining them before they’d left. They slid across the sand, always keeping the line of the rocks which guarded Kul Elna before them.

The sun was touching the tips of the outcropping by the time they’d made it to the stepwell. He suggested they drink the water, wanting in a vague way to hold on to the remnants of the beer. After, he stood on the edge of the well, watching the gathering shadows on the distant, silent buildings. Ryou’s hand touched his own and he grasped it unthinking.

The village of Kul Elna was, in many ways, unremarkable. The buildings, low and comprised of mud brick, weathered with age. There was a coldness to the place, that spoke of empty hearths and empty beds.

They walked the desolate spaces between the houses, and he didn’t comment to Ryou on the exacting detail in which every part of the village was represented. They both knew.

This was _ his _ domain. Bakura, a thief in the darkness. He remembered the look in his eyes from across the stump, when he’d knelt in the cool grass in Yugi’s body and faced him. A serpent risen to challenge the pharaoh, Isis had said once, in passing.

He knew, even without his memories, the role that was expected of him. To strike down the serpent, to turn aside venomous fangs so that the sun might rise, and order might be restored.

But… what had order brought them? The death of a village, the grief of a child, festering for millennia, metastasizing into blackened rage that threatened to blot out the sun.

They passed the houses, wordless. This wasn’t the place in the nightmare. Before them, a hewn stone staircase, descending into the bowels of the earth, yawned in the cliff side.

The place that marked their deaths. A tomb for the still-living. 

Inside was cold, colder than should have been possible. Ryou’s hand was the only point of warmth. He clutched the beer jar to his side, and they descended.

The place was constructed like a temple, pillars and paths leading to a central point. He recognized nothing except the furthest position, the convergence. They walked to stand before it, looked down upon it.

A stone, carved in the graven likeness of a pharaoh, crook and flail clasped to his chest, false beard fixed to his chin. Hewn into the surface were seven empty slots.

Seven molds, to catch hot metal, melted and cast from the blood and screams of men.

He stared at it, numb. He couldn’t imagine, insofar as he could imagine living the life Isis had told him he had lived, giving such a command. To kill for power, to kill for magic. But who was he to say? His then-self was a stranger, shaped by an ancient and alien world. Perhaps he had made choices that would seem despicable to him now, changed by the touch of Yugi’s understanding and Yugi’s life.

Beside him, Ryou gave a sharp start. “There’s something here with us,” he whispered.

He squeezed the young man’s hand tightly.

They came from the walls, the pillars, the ceiling, the floor. Oozing up from the dark drain of eternity, amorphous beings of shadow and flame. Stripped of their humanity and human shape by fire and dark magic. They were cursed, hideous, hateful, enraged.

They were also Bakura’s family.

“Do you remember any passages?” He said, as he watched the spirits writhe into existence. “They called it the Book of the Dead at the museum, but Grandpa gave it another name.”

“Some, yes,” said Ryou, sounding tense.

“I’m going to need them. Anything you can remember.” He set his mouth and released Ryou’s hand, knelt before the stone. He set the jar of beer in front of him, the loaves of bread.

“What are you thinking?”

“That this is a tomb,” he said quietly. He took the pomegranate, struck it against the stones. Red skin split and ruby seeds spilled. “And we should treat it like one.”

Ryou drew in a sharp breath. “I see. I’ll do my best.”

Ryou began to speak, and he repeated, wove his own words in when Ryou’s memory failed. He spoke spells of protection, of breathing breath and life back into the soul. Of feeding, of housing, of places of rest.

The spirits of Kul Elna screamed, whirling around them in a maelstrom. Their touch seemed to burn, leaving red weals on bare skin, but he persisted. They exhausted Ryou’s recollections, but still he talked, looking up into the stricken, inhuman faces of those he had wronged.

“I know what is expected of me, a life for a life, and you will have it. But I ask you this, not for my sake, but for the sake of your son. The last of your village.”

The cyclone slowed its whirling, as if watching him.

“I will help him pass the Hall of Judgement unharmed. It is my birthright and my responsibility. I alone can do it, but I cannot right this wrong if you devour my soul.” He bowed his head. “Let me pass, let us pass, and know that Amit will take your justice for you.”

Behind him, he heard Ryou’s breath hitch. “Yugi—” he began, but he held up a hand, begging for silence.

“This is my offer. I can make nothing better.”

Before them, the spirits twined themselves into a monstrous creature, red eyes and white wings and a scaled tail that formed a serpent. He heard Ryou cry out in alarm, then hands grabbed his shoulders as roughly as the snake’s head snapped forward, jaws opening impossibly wide, and darkness swallowed them.


	11. Scraggly

Yugi drove for what seemed like many hours, the scenery an unchanging and indistinguishable amalgamation of desert and open land. Nothing looked familiar to Bakura, but he suspected it would not have mirrored any real location regardless.

When the sun started to sink beyond the horizon, it began to snow.

Within moments, it had gone from a sprinkling of delicate flakes, to an utter whiteout. Yugi slowed, easing off the accelerator, but continued to crawl forward, leaning forward over the steering wheel—or more accurately, into it—and looking up into the gray and cloud-lined sky.

“I don’t like this,” said Yugi.

“How profound,” said Bakura. “And here the unnatural weather patterns are, being so encouraging.”

Yugi laid on the brakes and they skidded for several tense meters, fishtailing on the ice before grinding to a halt. He put the car in park, but didn’t turn off the engine, scanning the horizon.

“Snow,” he said, as if to himself. “Snow and ice.”

“An astute observation.”

Yugi looked at him with something approaching exasperated fondness and Bakura had to look away, the empty facsimile of a heart in his chest turning.

“I’m trying to remember,” said Yugi. “Momma wouldn’t let Grandpa take me to too many horror movies, and Ryou’s way more of a film buff. He probably saw the smaller budget stuff, maybe stuff that didn’t make it to Japan.”

Bakura opened his mouth to tell him that it didn’t matter what movie monster Ryou’s brain launched at them because they could shove a load of buckshot up its ass. What came out was: “You call her Momma?”

Yugi went bright red. “Yeah,” he said, after hesitating a moment. “She used to say she liked it when I called her that. Made her feel like a proper mom and not a delinquent.” He ran his hands along the steering wheel as if trying to warm them. “Why, what do you call your—?”

They both froze up, Yugi’s words cutting off abruptly. Bakura’s hands clutched the shotgun until they ached.

_ Momma, where are you? Momma! _

“Sorry.”

“I don’t want to hear it from you.”

“I’m still sorry.” Yugi groped along the dashboard and turned on the heat. The vents began to blow warm air.

“Keep driving.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well what else are we supposed to do?” snapped Bakura. “Sit here and make out until we freeze to death?”

There was a profound, awkward silence.

“Do… you want to?”

Bakura looked at the shotgun in his lap and considered whether he could fit it in his mouth.

“Because I gotta say, if this dimension plays by horror movie rules, I’m not sure I like our chances if we start getting naked.” Yugi paused, as if considering for several long moments. He reached over and rested a hand on Bakura’s, where it curled around the barrel of the gun.

He looked up slowly, met Yugi’s eyes. Yugi smiled at him, that stupid, warm smile that did stupid warm things to Bakura’s incorporeal stomach.

“Then again,” said Yugi, with utter sincerity. “If our goal is to flush out the monster, I think you might be on the right track.”

* * *

Having been born in the desert and being well acquainted with underground locales, Bakura, despite his very colorful life and penchant for occasional nudity, had never needed to share body heat. It was unspeakably awkward and yet somehow thrilling to strip down to warm skin and curl together in the spacious back seat of the Cadillac. The experience would no doubt have been vastly improved by a blanket, but between their coats they managed, Yugi draped across Bakura’s chest, feet cramped against the door, layered under every stitch of clothing they had. The fact that Yugi seemed more than eager to get back to this kissing business greatly improved the whole ordeal, and despite the strange feeling of exposure from the car windows all around them, Bakura soon found himself getting into it.

Yugi dug his fingers into the thick mane of Bakura’s hair and licked at his mouth, rubbing himself absently off on Bakura’s thigh. Bakura was dimly aware that he was developing a crick in his neck, but moving would have involved disrupting the delightful things that Yugi was doing with his tongue, so he merely gave a pointed tug at one of Yugi’s hands, hoping that he might successfully hint that while the hair pulling was very nice, he was hoping for a bit of action somewhere a bit more relevant.

Yugi, either oblivious or purposely teasing, the ass, did nothing of the sort. Bakura grumbled and pulled himself reluctantly away.

Before he could ask properly, or at least bluster out some sort of combination of words that Yugi might successfully translate and take pity on him, Yugi pushed himself up and folded his arms across Bakura’s chest, grinning like a cat with cream.

“So,” he said. “You see any monsters coming for us? Michael Myers? The Wolf Man? The Blob?”

Scowling, Bakura raised himself up on his elbow and craned his neck to look out into the endless swirl of white. “Nothing, you little wretch. You’re honestly expecting this nonsense to work?”

Yugi shrugged. “It works in the movies, and we’re clearly not in the real world.”

“You haven’t even figured out which movie you’re trying to invoke. You think the shotgun is supposed to be a metaphor? Besides, if something shows, you can just set it on fire with your little dragon again.”

“Ouch,” said Yugi. “and here I thought I seduced you with my ability to rescue us from chainsaw wielding maniacs and murderous cars.”

“My pants are already off, boy. This is the maximum amount of seduction possible.” Bakura squirmed to ease a cramping muscle and winced as skin stuck on vinyl and other skin, pulling. 

“Hm,” said Yugi. “And yet here we are, deliciously uneaten.” He cupped his chin in an exaggerated fashion, contemplating, and nodded sharply. “I think I have it.”

“Have what?”

Yugi met his gaze, and Bakura realized, with the same dawning sense of horror that he felt when Yugi—or was it the pharaoh?—maneuvered him into a particularly clever trap, that he had made a terrible mistake.

Yugi looked at him with an expression of great solemnity. “We just have to try  _ harder _ .”

Before Bakura could protest—or berate him for the absolutely  _ awful _ pun—Yugi dived under the pile of their jackets and out of sight.

Bakura’s head smacked the window of the Cadillac so hard his ears rang. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

As he clawed at the vinyl of the seats, groping desperately for a grip as he tried to keep himself from jerking uncontrollably, he couldn’t help but wonder, crazily, if this had been Yugi’s plan all along, to placate him with pancakes and blow jobs into stopping the end of the world.

He was so distracted by this thought, and, well, by the obvious, that he wound up staring blankly for several minutes before it fully registered what he was seeing through the window opposite him.

It was a face. Pale and gaunt, with bared, white teeth, peeled in a grin so wide it seemed about to split at the edges. Red eyes burning out like rubies lit from within, no pupils or sclera. Framed by a billowing curtain of white hair. Behind it, the snow swirled like a maelstrom.

It was a familiar face.

It was  _ his _ face.

Bakura didn’t remember much of anything, beyond grasping for his deck, the Ring, anything, the nearest thing within reach.

This happened to be the shotgun.

The sound of the shot in the enclosed space felt as if it blew out his eardrums. The recoil smacked him in the shoulder so hard it knocked the breath from him, stripped the skin from the finger he’d used to pull the trigger. The window shattered, everything beyond it vaporizing in a cloud of blood and brain. The icy wind came screaming in, bringing snow with it. Yugi bolted upright from between his legs, tearing aside their jackets, pawing them clear of his head. His eyes were saucer wide, numb horror and shock writ large on his features.

Over the sound of the wind, Bakura could hear himself gasping shallowly.

“I think,” he said, feeling as if he was talking through syrup. “I just found the monster.”

* * *

They stumbled out of the car, dressed in half of each other’s clothes. The wind cut like knives and Bakura felt himself start to shiver uncontrollably almost immediately. There was an abstract blood spray on the side of the car where he’d blown out the window, but no carcass, no corpse.

“Shit, it’s gone,” said Yugi.

“I blew off its head, genius, of course it’s gone.”

“Did you see what it looked like?”

Bakura pretended not to have heard the question. “I’d keep your deck close.”

“After this? I’m keeping the damn thing strapped to my body,” said Yugi. He straightened up, staring out into the whirling mess of snow. “Also I just realized. I could have filled the car with Kuribohs and kept us warm that way.”

The statement was so absurd that Bakura had to turn and stare at him.

Yugi shrugged. “It would have worked. We might still end up having to form an igloo out of them.”

Bakura ignored this and went back to scanning the area around the car. Around his neck, the Ring gave a little shiver, the points jangling against each other. Slowly, the tips began to turn, as if drawn by a magnet, towards the bleak expanse.

Bakura’s brain was buzzing, the darkness tugging at the angles and edges of him. For the first time in a long, long time, it felt disconcerting, uncomfortable, as if he’d donned his own skin to find it too tight.

“Hey,” said Yugi and Bakura swung back towards him as if drunk. Yugi’s eyes were guarded. “Is there something out there?”

_ Out there? Maybe. In here? Definitely. _

Instead of answering, Bakura stared out into the frozen wastes. His cheeks and ears burned with the cold.

“You understand, don’t you?” he said at last. “Where the power comes from? In the Items? Princess Incest ever tell you that?”

“From your village,” said Yugi, after a lengthy pause. “Your family. Their deaths.”

Bakura laughed shortly. “You think a village of tomb builders and petty thieves could be melted down into this kind of power? No, boy, their deaths were just the key, if you will. Dear old dad pharaoh wanted to open up a door. Problem was, he didn’t have a notion of what was behind it.”

“What was behind it?”

“Not what,” said Bakura. Red, burning eyes impressed themselves briefly across his vision. “Who.”

The points of the Ring jangled, leaping together, forming a point, straining towards a point in space.

The smile formed first, wide and grinning like a Cheshire cat. The white cloud of hair, the flapping black coat, the gaunt face and blank, staring red eyes.

Yugi sucked in a sharp breath.

“He found me, you know,” said Bakura, almost conversationally, watching as the body that was his-and-not-his, Ryou’s-and-not-Ryou’s, formed, a dark slash against the blank canvas of the snow. “Or they, or it. Found me cowering in the wreckage like a worm. Offered me death for death, blood for blood. What would you have done, I wonder, little King of Games? With your mother gutted and your home burned. Would you have made the same deal?”

The other Bakura laughed, raising a hand in greeting.

_ “Welcome, Vessel of the Pharaoh,”  _ it said.  _ “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.” _


	12. Side Story: The Back Muscles Prophecy

Malik had to admit, if he wasn’t fairly certain this whole mess was going to end with him dying horribly in a body that wasn’t even his own—plus, you know, the whole end of the world business—the sight of Seto Kaiba and the-thing-in-Malik’s-body catching sight of each other on the way to the duel arena and bellowing out simultaneous challenges would have been endlessly entertaining.

The wind whipped across the ridiculous duel arena, sending Kaiba and the the-thing-in-Malik’s-body’s long cloaks and coats flaring out in suitably dramatic fashion, and blowing up Mazaki’s skirt in a way that left Malik shivering and considering if there was a way to physically blast the two idiots currently engaged in a duel cum dick-measuring shouting match right off the top of the blimp, and perhaps save the world a lot of trouble. Beside him, Isis was clutching Mazaki’s arm and utterly failing to maintain an expression of serenity.

“You didn’t  _ actually _ happen to see any visions regarding how this plays out, did you?” muttered Malik out of the side of his mouth. The wind currents forced one to choose between the two extremes of intimate whispers or public shouting.

“Not...in so many words,” said Isis, her nails digging in to their arm. “I’m merely hoping that Kaiba is going to maintain his streak of outrunning destiny.”

“Wish he’d have taught me that trick,” grumbled Malik. “Preferably before Rishid got whipped and I got my back split open to become the pharaoh’s personal notepad.”

Isis winced. “That was…”

“Take a look at him up there, Isis.” The-thing-in-Malik’s-body was howling with laughter, features stretched in a rictus, eyes blazing, while across the arena Kaiba crossed his arms and looked down his nose. “Tell me that a ritual that pulled that out of me was in any way, shape, or form, worth anything.”

She slumped against his body. “No,” she said bitterly. “What do you want me to do about it?”

Malik sighed. In the arena Kaiba had managed to summon Obelisk, and was cutting swaths through the-thing-in-Malik’s-body’s life points in his typically systematic fashion. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do about it. The ritual’s in the past, and all that’s left is scar tissue and nightmares.”

Her hand tightened on his arm. “Brother…”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body was gearing up to summon the Winged Dragon of Ra, holding the Rod before him like a holy talisman, shouting something Malik couldn’t hear all that well over the rush of the wind. “We really are a fucked up family, aren’t we?”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

“I wonder if killing the pharaoh would have accomplished anything.”

“Maybe,” she said, wearily. “But he isn’t the pharaoh anymore. He was once, he could be again, but I have this strange feeling...that he doesn’t want to be.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“Nobody gets a choice in these matters.”

“Bullshit.” Malik drew in a breath and rubbed the backs of Mazaki’s knuckles in a futile attempt to dissipate stress and generate heat. “Surely there’s something suitably batshit that one could do to throw off the cosmic choice machine.”

“If anyone would know, I have no doubt it would be you.”

Malik hummed absently and watched the thing operate his body, striking out with wide, sweeping gestures and cackling as they pointed to the holographic golden dragon looming over all their heads.

“I think I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Well, it might get me thrown off the top of the blimp, so I’m going to ask you to go and execute a backup plan.”

“Backup plan?”

“I need you to try to wake Rishid.”

“Are you mad?”

“You really want to go asking that question?” He nudged at her. “Please, Sister, you’re the only one who even has a chance.”

“But...my Item...”

“You’re his  _ sister _ . Just...try? Please?” Hot tears pricked at the edges of Mazaki’s eyes. “I think we could use him here.” He scrubbed at Mazaki’s face and looked up to where the shadow in his body stood. “All of us.”

She squeezed his arm. “Alright,” she relented. “I’ll be back soon. Try not to do anything stupid.”

“Oh,” said Malik, as he felt her slip from his side, hurrying back towards the deck. “I’m not planning on stupid.”

He drew a deep breath and focused his attention on the figures on the arena platform.

“I’m planning on phenomenally stupid.”

* * *

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Mazaki?” Kaiba, to no one’s surprise, got defensive when his duels were interrupted. Malik ignored him and clambered up over the edge of the arena, managing to give nobody at all quite the eyeful as Mazaki’s skirt hiked up. He stood, brushed dust off their clothes, and approached his body, and the thing inhabiting it. He strode up to him, realizing only belatedly that current events left him quite a bit shorter than himself. He drew himself up to Mazaki’s full height, ignored Kaiba’s distant shouting, and looked himself in the eye.

“We have to talk.”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body blinked, looking bewildered. He looked up at Ra floating above them. “Now?”

“Now,” said Malik firmly. “This is me telling you that we need to talk. And you need to stop.”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body bristled. “I will never stop! I will rip this arrogant fool into shreds and then take the pharaoh's soul out through his--!”

“I got that part!” Malik hissed out a breath and scowled at them. He smacked Mazaki in the chest. “For me, right?”

“What?”

“For. Me.” snapped Malik. “Father. The pharaoh. All of it. You did it for me, right?”

A strange, disconcerted look crossed his face. “Yes,” he said, slowly. “That was why you called me.To...to...protect you. ”

Malik sighed. “Well you’re doing a shit job at that.” He gestured at Mazaki’s body. “Look at me! Does this look protected to you?”

The-thing-in-Malik’s-body pursed his lips in thought. “Yes?”

Malik let out a frustrated sound. “No, genius! The answer is no! I’m not protected! You’re doing the opposite of that!”

“You were going to stop me!”

“Because this isn’t helpful!” shouted Malik. “Look at what’s happened! You nearly killed Rishid! You threatened to hurt Isis.That isn’t okay!”

“Well what do you want from me?” he roared. “You called me! You begged for me! Begged for help! Begged for a protector! I wasn’t more than a shadow before you brought me forth and fed me on blood! I killed for you! Again, and again, I did the things that you were too afraid to!”

“I know.” The wind was dragging tear tracks from the edges of Mazaki’s eyes. “I know. I was a kid and I had no idea it worked that way. But he’s gone. The one who hurt us, when I made you. He’s gone and he won’t ever come back.”

“The pharaoh—”

“Our father.”

They tensed, and Malik dared to step closer. He reached for him with Mazaki’s arms, clutched at his cloak, wrapped their arms around him.

“I want you to come back,” he said. “You’re mine. My responsibility. I want you back in here where you belong.”

“Our...our destiny isn’t finished.”

Malik shook their head, rubbing Mazaki’s face against his chest and leaving a faint trail of snot against the dark cloak. “ _ I’m  _ finished. I don’t want to duel. I want to go back downstairs and check on Rishid. I want to get Isis and I want us all to go as far away from that awful place as we can. I want to forget about destiny and the pharoah and every shit thing that ever came out of that miserable tomb.” Hot tears squeezed against his eyes, burning. “I want to go  _ home _ .”

A hesitant arm hooked around him. He hiccuped and looked up into that strange, distorted face. A face like a mask, human, but wrong, but with human eyes staring out of it, lost and strange and taking him in.

He reached and pressed his hands in the thick, electrified spikes of his hair, lifted up on Mazaki’s toes and pressed them forehead to forehead. “Please,” he said. “I want us to  _ go _ .”

“I…”

“You’re supposed to be here, in here with me.” He squeezed Mazaki’s eyes shut. “We have stuff to work on but...it’s not right without you gone.”

A feather light kiss, just the faintest touch, pressed hesitantly at the corner of his mouth. Behind his back, he felt him move, press his hand over their deck.

_ Alright. _

A gesture of surrender.

He dragged Malik up and kissed him as just above them, Ra let out an earsplitting screech. Light exploded from every pinion on the dragon’s wings, the arena shook.

And the next thing Malik knew, he was being punched in the face.

By Mazaki.

He fell over backwards, landed on his ass. Ra had vanished, winking out of existence, and Malik had the dizzying realization that Obelisk was also absent as he groaned and clutched his head. Then hands were on him, familiar hands.

Four hands.

“Rishid!”

Rishid caught him up in an embrace that dragged him from the floor.

“What the hell is going on?” he heard Mazaki shout, followed closely by Kaiba snarling that’s what he wanted to know and he would damn well ask the questions around here.

Malik clung to Rishid and laughed until he thought he would be sick.

“Did you do that?” Isis was saying. “Make the gods discorporate?”

“They did what?” Malik said. He blinked around, realized that Ra was absent from his duel disk. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. “No?”

Isis went suddenly rigid, her eyes fixed on him. “Malik,” she said. “Shirt. Off.”

“What?” Malik squawked. “Why?”

But Isis was already on him, tugging at his shirt like it had personally offended her. “Off, brother. Shirt. Off.”

“Is this another one of your magic tricks?” said Kaiba, fuming, storming across the arena as Malik struggled to free himself from the tangle of his shirt. “Where is my card?”

Isis didn’t answer him. Malik could feel the heat of her behind him, the weight of her silence. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

“What’s wrong?” he said, hating the way his voice quaked.

The weight of her hand on his back was an electric shock. He jerked, a convulsion, recoiling from expected pain, from the strain of scar tissue, from the queerly sensitive lines that always, in his mind, stank of tomb dust and dark magic. He flinched, and froze, his heart pounding.

The pain was absent, no rough catch against her fingers. Just a memory that something should be there,  _ had _ been there. But now...

Isis ran a gentle hand across his back, the way she would sometimes send him to sleep when he was small, crying for a mother that he’d never known. His breath choked in his throat.

“Kaiba,” said Isis, with the kind of gravity usually reserved for pronouncements of destiny or for when Malik had done something which supremely pissed her off as a child. “I require a place to check my email.”


	13. Two Royal Crowns

Bakura had never been the most connected to his body even before it had turned to dust millenia before, but now it seemed as if he watched from a great distance as the dark creature wearing his face and form, or was it Ryou’s face?, stalked across the ice and snow towards them. He felt the sphere of warmth as Yugi stepped closer to him, and saw from the corner of his eye that the boy’s face was pale and drawn.

_ “What is it, Yugi?” _ said the darkness with Bakura’s voice.  _ “Not glad to meet me?” _

“What is he?” said Yugi, not addressing the figure directly. “One of the monsters? Like on the tablets?”

_ “Hardly, child,” _ said the Darkness.  _ “The monsters are servants. I am the master.” _

The figure stepped closer and Yugi took a step back, bumping into Bakura. Bakura felt his hands rise, a rictus, clasping at Yugi’s shoulders so tight the young man winced. He looked up over his shoulder at Bakura, a faint, nervous cast in his eyes, and Bakura felt the warm spot that had been incubating in his chest ice over.

_ Yes, that’s right. Fear me. Hate me. Hate me so I can destroy you and feel nothing. _

Incorporeal blood was pounding in his ears as the darkness regarded them from where they stood.

_ “You look so very much like him,” _ they said.  _ “That same arrogant stare. The same weak features. The spitting image of Horus’s brat.” _

Yugi tensed under Bakura’s hands, but then raised his own, the right one, resting it on Bakura’s left, curling over the fingers digging into his jacket. Bakura looked dumbly at them, small and short, the nails bitten to the quick.

Warmth crawled along the back of his hand, from under the soft palm. It infused the flesh, creeping up his arm towards the shoulder, towards the icy lump that occupied his chest. He gave a violent shudder.

The expression on the darkness’s features flickered for just a moment.

_ “He wants it, you know,” _ they said.  _ “He’ll play by the rules but what he really wants is your blood, your flesh. To carve out your body and stuff it with insects to eat you alive. You cannot fathom that depth of rage, child. Your deepest emotions, love, hate, fear, are all pale shadows against the stuff upon which he has fed me for millennia.” _

“I know that,” said Yugi, quietly. He pushed back into Bakura’s hands, just the barest bit. “I know there’s no fixing what happened. No way to take away that pain. But I don’t think you care about him.”

_ “Oh you wound me, child.” _ They shook their head.  _ “I have kept him at my side since long before you were a glimmer in your scrabbling ancestors eyes. There is no one and nothing that loves him as well as I.” _

Yugi shook his head. “That’s not true. You protect the ones you love.”

_ “And have I not protected him? Given him powers to strike down those who would oppose him?” _

“Protecting doesn’t have to mean facilitating vengeance,” said Yugi. “It means comfort, love and support. Not indulging a child’s grief and rage to fulfill your own ends.”

_ “And what are your ends, child?” _ they hissed.  _ “What have you to offer him that I cannot? The Puzzle? The artifact is mine to begin with.” _

“Nothing,” said Yugi. “I have nothing I can offer that can compare to you. I’m just a kid.” He swallowed and tightened his grip on Bakura’s hand. “Just me.”

_ “What?” _

“You heard me,” said Yugi. “All I can offer is all that anyone can. Me, myself, all that I am.”

_ “Meaning what, precisely?”  _ they snapped.  _ “Don’t speak in riddles!” _

“Whatever he wants it to mean,” said Yugi. “ _ Him. _ Not you.”

_ “We are one!” _

“I don’t think you are,” said Yugi. “According to you, you’re some all powerful demon of shadow. But he was just a child from Egypt. A person.”

_ “He hasn’t been a person for longer than your last relatives in living memory have been alive.” _

“Bullshit,” said Yugi. “He’s a person. And he can make his own decisions. My offer is to him.”

_ “What offer?” _

“Whatever he wants,” said Yugi. “If he wants to kill me to try and find some closure, then he can do that. Or he can have me.” His shoulders shifted beneath Bakura’s hands as he raised his own and rested them against his chest. “I have space. I held a soul with a lot of old pain too. I can make room for him.”

_ “You would give him your dying corpse?” _ they laughed.  _ “To what end?” _

“To use as he wants,” said Yugi. “He never had the opportunity to live a life that hadn’t been touched by violence. By you. If he wants that, he can have it.”

The smile evaporated from their face.  _ “You would not dare.” _

“I would,” said Yugi firmly. The warmth around Bakura’s hand intensified. “What do you say?” he said quietly. He held tight to Bakura’s hand and turned to face him, feeding one arm over his head, like they were on a dance floor. He settled against Bakura’s chest, looked up at him, serious, but with something soft in his eyes. “Do you want that? My death? My life?”

Bakura’s head was buzzing with migraine intensity, but he struggled to focus, to grasp the shape of the idea. He stared at Yugi.

_ “He—” _

“Shut  _ up _ ,” said Yugi. “He’s not your plaything. He can answer.”

“No,” Bakura croaked out at last. His body felt like something was crawling under the skin. “I don’t want your death. Or your life.”

Yugi’s eyes flickered with uncertainty, but he tightened his grip. “Then what?”

Bakura shut his eyes tight, feeling sure he would vomit at any second. He felt like he was ripping apart at the edges.

“You,” he said. “I want you. I want us.”

The kiss burned like fire, hurt like being set alight and gutted alive, but Yugi clung to him as the world began to rip apart. He was being skinned, ripped from the exuvia that surrounded him, spat forth new and flayed. Something with the sound of tearing church bells, like a noise out of space, sound beyond human bearing, drilled into his eardrums as darkness rose up from below and swallowed them both.

* * *

Darkness, and warmth, the flicker of shadow on shadow. Bakura could hear the clink of metal and the sound of a pulley system, chain sliding and clanking. He could feel Yugi against him, hands clasped in his own.

The floor was hard under his feet, his shoes felt as thin as paper against it. Slowly, the room began to resolve around them.

They were standing in a great hall, dimly lit, the shadows of pillars all around them. The floor was fragmented, and here and there cracks and gaps to some unseen abyss riddled it. Ahead loomed a stark, huge shape, a series of harsh lines and angles.

It was a set of scales.

“Son of a bitch,” said Bakura, before he could stop himself.

“Was that a joke?” The figure which emerged from behind the scales was human in shape, a dark skinned man clad in a stark white shendyt, but there was something off about the face, a shifting quality that continually manifested and dissipated the shapes of a long snout, proud pointed ears, sharp white teeth. “Or a statement of fact?”

“Oh my god,” Yugi whispered, hands fisting in Bakura’s coat, which he only now realized had changed, gone red and long. A pharaoh’s coat, plucked from a tomb so long ago. Figured he’d end up in a courtroom wearing contraband. The hands which gripped Yugi’s shoulders were now brown, with weathered knuckles, instead of the frail white spiders which he’d borrowed from Ryou. He felt a strange pang at the loss of this last, little reminder.

“Well,” said Bakura. “One of mine anyway.”

“Yugi!”

Their heads shot up as one just in time to see a riot of color fly across the courtroom, flapping purple cape and jangling jewelry. Bakura’s heart twisted in his chest as Yugi pulled away from him just in time to catch the pharaoh to him, wrapping him up in a tangle of loose raiment.

It was then that Bakura spotted who was behind them.

Ryou’s face looked quiet and drawn, exhaustion carving deep lines and dark circles, like the mask of a skull. “Hello,” he said, in the manner of someone who didn’t know what else to say.

Bakura looked away. Yugi and the pharaoh were pressed close, conversing in harsh whispers, hands pressed to hair and faces, completely depriving Bakura of any excuses. “I met your car,” he said, and kicked himself for the inanity of the statement.

“My...what?”

“When you were twelve,” he said. “You rented that tape about the haunted car and we watched it on the couch. It was summertime, a month after the anniversary. I forgot about it. It tried to eat us while we were in your head.”

Ryou stared at him. “I’m...sorry?”

“No,” said Bakura. “I’m sorry. Really sorry. For everything.”

Ryou drew in a sharp breath. “You—”

“For your mother. And Amane. And for not understanding. And for being so stuck up my own ass that I couldn’t understand what you were trying to do.” Bakura swallowed, kept his gaze trained on the scales. “It doesn’t fix it, nothing ever does. But it’s true.”

Ryou approached him, cautiously, as though examining a puzzle he didn’t quite understand. “Why now?”

“Because I’m a giant dumbass. And because Yugi’s got more compassion than sense. You two have that in common.”

“I...suppose that’s so,” said Ryou slowly. He reached out, lightly rested a hand against Bakura’s shoulder. Bakura realized, disconcertingly, that he was shorter than Ryou in this form. “So this is what you looked like? When you died?”

“Why? You like it?”

“I wasn’t aware you had abs.”

“Nobody alive who can prove otherwise,” said Bakura. “Besides, one of us has to have some muscles.”

“‘Us’?” said Ryou.

Bakura looked away. “I talk a lot.”

“I think,” said Ryou slowly. “I’ve only ever heard you call us, ‘us’, once.”

Bakura’s stomach turned. “I lie a lot.”

“But not now?”

“No point,” said Bakura. “Everything’s ending, isn’t it? We’re in the hall of justice. End of the line.”

Ryou sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “We need to talk. Or rather you and  _ he _ need to.”

“Fuck that.”

“There’s not much time,” Ryou said. “We...were there, you know. At Kul Elna.”

Every muscle in Bakura’s body locked up, breath crystallizing in his throat.

“I thought...that there’d be a puzzle. Or we’d have to fight. To duel to get out. But...Bakura, he  _ didn’t.” _

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t fight them. He accepted responsibility for their deaths.” Ryou looked troubled. “We laid the offerings, said the prayers, as best we could. Bakura…” Ryou swallowed hard. “Do you understand? He accepted the blood debt. He came here to be  _ judged _ .”

Bakura stared at him.

“That…” he said, “stupid, arrogant fuck.”

“Excuse me?”

Bakura whirled on the pharaoh, stormed over to where he was still holding Yugi. He looked up, startled, and by all the gods he still looked as insufferable as the day Bakura had waltzed into his throne room and dumped his father’s corpse on the floor.

“You,” he snapped, trying to ignore the fact he was no longer taller than either of them. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you the old fashioned way.”

The pharaoh scowled. “I’d like to see you try.”

“You don’t get to do this!” Bakura shouted. “You don’t get to haul in here after three millennium and get judged for something you don’t even remember!”

“What’s to remember?” shouted the pharaoh back at him. “I killed your family! And I am  _ trying _ to—”

“You didn’t kill my family, you self-important fuck!” snarled Bakura. “Your  _ father _ killed my family. Your uncle. Your whole stupid court. We’re the same  _ age _ , you dumbass! You were a squalling babe in arms when it happened!”

“It’s still my responsibility!”

“Your responsibility was to  _ listen _ to me! To listen when I came through the door and told you the gold around your neck was forged in blood! If you’d wanted to make amends you could have done it then and not swallowed the lies of your sniveling court!”

The pharaoh paled. “I wouldn’t…”

“You did!” Bakura scrubbed at his face. “By the gods, you’re an asshole.”

“And you’re not?”

“I never pretended not to be!”

“Guys,” Yugi interjected. “While this is definitely important, I think we’re supposed to be appearing in court.”

Bakura turned sharply on his heel and stalked in the direction of the scales, and the man tapping his bare foot on marble with some impatience.

“I’m guilty,” snapped Bakura. “I tried to end the world. Made a deal with a demon to do it. Where’s the hippo-crocodile thing so it can eat me?”

“Rude,” said a voice from the darkness behind the scales. A dark shape rose, resolving itself into the form of a stout woman, wrapped in a patchwork dress of fur and scales and skin. “I’m not your personal executioner, brat of Kul Elna.”

“Except for the part where that is literally your job,” said Bakura. “Eat me! And that’s not an innuendo!”

The pharaoh hurried up behind him, tried to elbow Bakura aside. Bakura kicked him in the shin. “He’s not here to be judged,” blurted the pharaoh.

“The hell I’m not!”

“Shut up, you ass,” hissed the pharaoh. He addressed the court again. “I am incomplete, a pharaoh without a name, but still a pharaoh. I am invoking my birthright. The right to be judged. For safe passage through the Halls of Judgement as a descendant of Osiris.” He snatched at Bakura’s hand, ignoring the spit curses. “For him.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“I agree,” said Anubis. “What precisely are you asking?”

“To be judged,” said the pharaoh. “The odds are in my favor by right of divine blood. But to be judged on his behalf, and to accept the punishment that would be his. A trade, a soul for a soul.”

“Interesting,” said Anubis. “But why?”

“He was innocent of any crime before the slaughter of his family,” said the pharaoh. “My line owes him a blood debt, and it will end with me.”

“You don’t get to make this decision!”

“ _ Bakura.” _

Yugi’s voice rang through the courtroom, freezing them both in place. Bakura’s head jerked in his direction.

They were standing, side by side. Yugi’s arm was around Ryou’s waist, as if supporting him. They watched them, Bakura and the pharaoh, something strangely hollow in both of their eyes.

“Bakura,” said Ryou quietly. “Please.”

Bakura’s guts turned. He looked around the courtroom, at the gods, watching them all with mild curiosity, at the scales, looming and silent, the fronds of a curling feather just visible on one platform, at the pharaoh, who was carefully not looking at Yugi and Ryou, his shoulders slumped, defeated.

His mouth tightened.

He snatched at the pharaoh’s wrist, locked his fingers around gold layered on bony flesh. He dragged him forward, towards the scales.

“Both of us,” he snapped, scowling up at Anubis, who peered down at him curiously. “A gamble. A two-for. If I win, we both go wherever the fuck you plan on sending us. The fields of eternal rest, or her gullet, or wherever.”

One dark eyebrow raised. “And why would you think that gambling with me is an option?”

“It’s  _ always _ an option,” said Bakura.

“Bakura—”

“Shut up, Princess.”

“Hm,” said Anubis. “Very well. As the challenged, I will choose the game.”

“Fine by me.”

“Then let us stick to tradition, shall we? Dice.”

“You got it.”

Anubis extended a hand, the fingers too long and bony, tipped with claws that vanished as quickly as they reappeared. Four dice were cradled in the palm, crude things of carved bone like Bakura had seen wielded by the elders of the village, tools of entertainment and divination alike.

He took two of them, and Anubis withdrew his hand. “What are the rules?”

“Even trumps odd.”

“Wait,” said the pharaoh. “Give me one. We can roll together.”

“Why?”

“There is strength in unity,” he said, quietly. “You already offered it. Let me offer the same.”

Bakura hesitated. The pharaoh was watching him with solemn eyes, a troubled, but otherwise unreadable expression on his face.

Bakura held out the die.

The pharaoh’s hand was just as warm as Yugi’s. He scooped the item from Bakura’s palm.

“Together?” he said hesitantly.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” said Bakura. “Yugi may have been right about you, but you’re still an asshole.”

“I know,” said the pharaoh heavily.

Bakura steeled himself, and took his hand. The pharaoh jumped slightly, surprised, and stared at him.

“Together,” said Bakura, and squeezed.

“My roll,” announced Anubis. He tossed the dice with the skilled hand of a professional. They bounced and spun, rolling to a halt. “Six. Four and two.”

Damn, that would be tough to beat. Together, they shook the dice, raised, and released.

Bakura needlessly held his breath.

The dice skipped across the marble floor, converging and just missing striking against each other. All three of them leaned forward.

“Doubles,” said Bakura, dumbfounded. “Two twos.”

“Well done,” said Anubis. “Ammit will be pleased to dine on a double portion.”

He turned back to the scales, adjusting them. The second tray appeared empty, but Bakura could see him adjusting it, as if it contained something.

Out of spite, and a selfish desire not to face this alone, he didn’t let go of the pharaoh’s hand. The pharaoh didn’t try to reclaim it.

Anubis released the scales.

They swung, raising and lowering, and finally, finally settling, hanging askew.

With the feather on the lower end.

“Hm,” said Anubis. “That’s interesting.”

“We’re...more than worthy?” said Bakura.

“No, you idiot,” said Anubis. “There isn’t enough to weigh.”

“I—surely there is,” spluttered the pharaoh.

“Nope,” announced Anubis. “Just fragments of shadow and heart.” He gestured at the pharaoh. “You don’t even have a name to contribute.”

“I do!” said the pharaoh. “It’s just...been forgotten.”

“Well then you’d better go find it, hadn’t you?” said Anubis, sounding impatient. “The point is, we can’t carry out the judgment at this time. I’ll have Thoth table the motion until you can cobble together something we can judge.”

“And what the hell do we do in the meantime?” said the pharaoh. Bakura thought he sounded entirely too distressed by the prospect of  _ not _ being eaten.

“Don’t worry,” said Anubis. “You still won the dice roll. I keep my word. You get to go to the same place.”

He seized them by the arms, lifted them bodily off the ground, and flung them both into the abyss.


	14. Opening

Bakura landed on the floor with a shout and a thud against carpet. He laid for several moments, dazed, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

A room. An ordinary, if completely strange bedroom, rug on the floor and books on the shelves, the window open, a warm breeze tugging at the curtains. A new dimension? Had the bastard gods decided there was some new and creative way they could make him suffer?

From beyond the door, he heard footsteps, muffled by a rug. He tensed, hand clenching around empty air as he glanced for anything nearby he could use as a weapon.

“You alright in there, sweetie?”

Bakura froze. Every joint and muscle locked. His heart pounded, deafening in his ears. The words were different, but the voice, the tone and pitch of it resonated through his head, carved its way down into his chest, as if ripping through blood and bone and the red pulp meat of his heart. His mouth opened, almost against his will.

“Momma?” he croaked.

The handle to the bedroom door turned.

Bakura hadn’t seen his mother’s face in going on four millennia. This woman was older, her brown skin marked with faint lines of age, her strange pale hair, hair like his, half-covered, dressed down in a pale house dress patterned with flowers. But it was her, the face he’d looked into when he was small.

“Sweetie?” she said. “Did you hit your head?”

Bakura couldn’t speak. The words that tried to form in his throat died unborn and he could only shake his head.

She looked him over, brows furrowing. “If you say so. Up then, breakfast is ready and you’ve got to leave in a half hour.”

She vanished, leaving the door open.

Slowly, Bakura rolled to his feet and stood.

The room was eerily familiar, yet totally alien. If he stared at specific objects, he could place them in space and time, the shorts crumpled on the floor, the multifaceted dice on the desk, gleaming in a shaft of morning sunlight. He knew there was a pocketknife, lifted from a student at school, tucked into the bed frame, just under the edge of the mattress.

The room was his.

“What the fuck?” Bakura whispered under his breath.

Was it a hallucination? Everything felt real enough, the hard floor under his bare feet, the soft fabric of the shorts he was now wearing, shorts he’d never seen, shorts he could remember putting on the night before. His shirt was a burnt red, unrecognizable, an old one, soft from many washings. He’d received it for his birthday four years ago.

He was losing his fucking mind.

Before he could think, he was tearing for the door, for the stairs, for the front of the apartment. He raced down the side staircase, nearly bowling over a little old woman laboring in the opposite direction with a load of laundry.

He burst into sunlight.

Bakura had never seen the streets of Cairo, never seen the land of his birth again after he’d woken in Ryou’s body, from a sleep only occasionally punctuated by devouring the souls and bodies of the living. The road before the apartment building was alive with commuters, on foot, on bicycles and motorized vehicles, even some riding or guiding livestock. The crowd was a riot of color.

Bakura stood in the dust of his homelands, and gaped.

A familiar flag caught his eye, arresting him. He turned.

The pharaoh was standing on the front steps of the building, staring upwards as if transfixed. The pharaoh, dressed in shorts and a plain shirt, his arms bare, sandals on his feet, but the pharaoh unmistakable. His hair was tied up and back, bright wings of color folded.

As if sensing Bakura’s presence, he turned. Their eyes met.

For ages, they stared at each other, frozen, the pulse of the city moving around them.

Bakura lifted one bare foot, took a step.

“Habibi!”

The pharaoh’s head snapped up. Three floors up, a woman was leaning out a window. She waved a paper bag.

“You’re going to be late for school!”

Bakura looked down at his own clothing, bare feet, swore, and raced back inside the building.

* * *

Having ridden in Ryou’s head for a good portion of his life, Bakura was not what you would call unfamiliar with the modern school system. It helped that he could understand everyone, despite the fact that they commonly spoke no languages in which Ryou or even he had ever been fluent.

It did not help that apparently he—or the he which now existed in this time—also sucked at school.

He ignored the furtive glance that the pharaoh shot him when he slipped into the class ten minutes late, earning a hefty scowl from the instructor. He opened the lesson book, angled himself so he could  _ just _ see the one of the student next to him, and tried to look busy.

He didn’t give the pharaoh the opportunity to accost him in private. He shot out of his seat the moment they were released, and booked it.

The schoolyard was bright and peopled with students, easily allowing Bakura to get lost among them. He soon found a remnant of a dying tree against a fence, and scaled it, tucking himself among the branches to survey the place. The wind blew through the branches, ruffling his hair, and he closed his eyes, half dozing.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” he said.

“You’ve had nothing  _ but _ things to say to me for the last three thousand years,” said the pharaoh, peering up at him from the base of the tree. “The least you could say is hello.”

“Asshole. There, I said something.”

The pharaoh sighed and slumped against the tree. “Would you believe I still can’t find my name?”

Bakura boggled down at him. “You have a fucking  _ family _ . Surely one of them knows it.”

“I have my  _ mother, _ ” said the pharaoh. “And she calls me ‘habibi’.”

Bakura snickered and the pharaoh scowled at him.

“What, am I supposed to say ‘oh mother, please remind me of my name because I apparently don’t remember it’? That won’t make me look like a lunatic at all.”

“Didn’t they take roll in class?”

“A motorcycle drove by when they were reading my name.” The pharaoh rubbed his face. “I think my surname is Hadid.”

“Sucks to be you.”

The pharaoh tipped his head back and eyed him. “We’re literally in the same boat.”

“Yeah, but I’m handsomer and not the product of generations of incest. So it sucks less to be me, all family burning aside.”

“I won’t argue with that,” said the pharaoh, though there was the slightest lilt to his voice that made Bakura want to squirm.

The bell rang and they returned to the classroom. The afternoon sun heated up the room to a gentle boil, and made Bakura want to put his head down on the desk and go to sleep. From the corner of his eye, he could see the pharaoh bent over his lesson book, studiously scratching away, the bastard. It figured he would be a bookish nerd, even if Yugi wasn’t that kind.

The thought arrested him. Did Yugi still exist here?

Did Ryou?

The calendar year read the same as when they’d been competing in the finals, same month too, but...

The day dragged to a close and their instructor returned exams before releasing them, giving Bakura a pointed look and tapping the “40%” etched in red pen at the top of his paper. Bakura scowled at it.

He was walking back the way the half-remembered now-memories told him led home, when he heard the telltale sound of footsteps behind him.

Multiple sets of footsteps.

He glanced back, gauging them. There were four, boys, all ones he recognized from the classroom. They wore identical, and ugly expressions.

_ Go figure. _

He kept walking.

They surged up around him, hungry, sniffing for blood.

“You stole Amir’s good knife, you little fuck,” growled one.

“Maybe,” agreed Bakura. “He does look like the kind of guy who has stuff stolen.”

Amir, easily a head taller than Bakura, snatched at his shoulder, dragging him to a halt. “Don’t mouth off, punk! I know you have it!”

Bakura regarded him, but didn’t struggle, leaving his hands in his pockets. “I see. Do you want me to give it back?”

“Yes, you fuck!”

“If you say so,” said Bakura. He snatched one hand out of his pocket, hand wrapped around the folded knife like a bludgeon, and punched Amir in the face.

He felt bone shatter and blood spray. Amir screamed, and the other boys sprang.

Bakura was embarrassingly relieved to find that, for all his distinctive lack of height, this body was in much better shape that Ryou’s had been, and there was a satisfying force to his punches. Still though, it was a four-on-one fight, especially once Amir picked himself up and started laying into Bakura, sprinkling him with blood with every punch, and eventually Bakura found himself being wrestled towards the ground.

It was at this point that the pharaoh came barreling into things and punched one of the boys square in the balls.

The boy dropped like a stone, releasing Bakura’s leg, which he immediately used to kick Amir in the face. They dropped him amid shouting and confusion and the pharaoh darted in to kick another guy’s knee out from under him.

“Come on!”

Bakura didn’t need telling twice. He scrambled to his feet and took off after the pharaoh, tearing pell mell through the streets, dodging commuters and vendors and nice old ladies out trying to enjoy the sunshine without being harassed by hooligans. They thundered their way into the lobby of the apartment building and staggered to a halt, both of them gasping.

“I didn’t know you could throw a punch,” said Bakura, when he could breathe again.

The pharaoh looked at him. “I had military training. I couldn’t tell you which end of a gun is which, but the instructors did  _ not _ go easy on me.”

Well damn. “Not bad, Princess. Seems you’re some use after all.”

The pharaoh groaned. “Why did you have to go and steal something of theirs?”

Bakura shrugged. “Ask me from three weeks ago. The real question is why it took them so long to notice.”

The pharaoh sighed and scrubbed at his face. “Of course.”

They both seemed to notice the strange silence that settled over them. Bakura rubbed his thumb across the knife, now sticky with blood from its tour as a nose club. “But…” The words seemed to stick in his throat. “Thank you. Anyway.”

The pharaoh blinked at him in bewilderment. “You’re welcome?”

Bakura coughed. “I’m going to go try and clean this off before Momma gets suspicious.”

“Momma?”

Bakura froze. 

_ Fuck. _

“That’s...nice,” said the pharaoh, before Bakura could threaten him with disembowelment. “Yugi calls his mother that too. I mean the word is different, obviously but—”

“Damn it, shut up.”

The pharaoh went slightly red. “I’m sorry.”

“Just full of apologies, aren’t you?” Bakura waffled, but finally shoved the knife in his pocket, under the logic that his shorts had blood on them already. “Does he exist, you think? Wherever the fuck this is?”

“Yes.”

“Just ‘yes’? What, do you have some mystic phone line up your ass?”

“No,” said the pharaoh. “I used the library computer and found a newspaper article on Duelist Kingdom.”

Fuck, that was actually a pretty smart idea.

“He exists,” said the pharaoh, sounding weary. “Ryou too, his name was on the list of competitors. I have no idea if they’re our—how much they remember.”

A depressing thought.

“Also we don’t have any powers as far as I can determine, except memories of that time.” The pharaoh looked at him. “You haven’t noticed anything?”

Bakura considered lying. “No,” he relented.

The pharaoh nodded. “The only way to know for sure...would be to go. But, they’re in Japan, and we’re here.”

Trapped by country, circumstance, and finance. Bakura sighed. “Fuck.”

“Indeed.”

Silence lapsed over them. Bakura cleared his throat. “I gotta get back.”

“Of course. May I walk with you? I’m on the fourth floor, right above you.”

“You’re  _ asking _ ? It’s two floors. There’s one damn staircase.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You and your fancy manners.”

They traipsed up the stairs in exhausted silence. Bakura paused on the landing of the third floor. “It was…” he said. “Good. To have you help me punch a dude’s balls.”

One of the pharaoh’s perfectly formed eyebrows rose. “That’s...thank you?”

Bakura nodded. “Good night,” he said, because it seemed like the thing to do. And then, because he was physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut. “Don’t burn any villages in your sleep.”

“ _ Bakura—” _

“You see, it’s funny because you  _ haven’t. _ ”

The pharaoh stared at him. Bakura gave him an ironic salute and sauntered back to the apartment.

* * *

“I’m not sure why it is you thought ‘it’s mostly not my blood’ would get you off the hook,” said Bakura’s mother, wiping at the scratches on Bakura’s face with a rag that smelled of iodine.

“Isn’t that better than my blood?”

His mother sighed. “Did you get into it with Fatima’s kid again?”

“Who?”

“You know,—” a truck outside laid on the horn, drowning her words. “On the fourth floor?”

_ You’ve got to be kidding me. _

He shrugged. “What does it matter?”

His mother scowled. “Fatima is a very dear friend, you know that.”

The worst part was, he  _ did  _ know. Or now-him did. “Whatever. He’s just an ass anyway.”

His mother looked at him, and he looked away. “It wasn’t him, alright? He...helped me out of a scrape, that’s all.”

“Oh.” His mother set aside the rag. “That’s better, I guess. Come on, let’s have dinner. You’ve still got homework.”

_ Of fucking course. _

Later that night, after pacing the floors restless for an hour, he stuck his head out the window. Breathed in deep breaths of night air tinged with exhaust fumes.

“Bakura?”

He twisted, looked up.

The pharaoh was peering down at him, not more than a handful of feet above his head.

“ _ That’s  _ your room?”

The pharaoh nodded. He opened his mouth, hesitated. “I have an idea, if you want to hear it.”

“About?”

“How to go see them.”

Gods help him, Bakura’s ears perked up.

“And?”

“There’s an internship,” he said. “A museum here in Cairo. They’re going to be doing a traveling exposition to Japan. Domino Museum has offered to host. We’d be able to get student visas to help curate it. There’s a few slots.”

Bakura blinked at him. That sounded so... _ normal _ . “How do we get an internship?”

“We apply,” said the pharaoh. “Except…” He paused, chewing his lip.

“Yes?”

“It requires a secondary diploma, which means you have to get your grades high enough by the end of the year to graduate.”

“You fuck,” snarled Bakura. “What business of yours is that?”

The pharaoh glared at him. “I overheard our mothers talking about it, you ass. Your mother is really worried. She wants to find you a tutor, but she can’t afford it.”

Bakura bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.

The pharaoh sighed, then looked at him, expression set. “I’m going to do it. Tutor you. All you have to do is cooperate.”

“Fuck that.”

“Please?” said the pharaoh. “I want—” He stopped. “If they remember, they’ll want to see you.”

_ Fuck _ .

Bakura growled. “Fine. Teach me your fancy crap, Princess.”

“Tomorrow,” said the pharaoh firmly. “After school. I’ll come to you.”

Bakura slammed the window shut so hard it rattled the glass.

* * *

When the pharaoh entered his room, carting an armload of books, Bakura felt very much like a cornered animal.

The pharaoh set them down on the desk. Pulled up a chair that Bakura’s mother had dragged in from the kitchen. He opened up the first one. “Let’s start with math.”

Bakura groaned.

“Be patient with me, I’ve got something more interesting later.”

“Fine,” Bakura begrudgingly took a pen and paper, and they began to work through the homework problems.

A couple hours later, when Bakura’s brain felt thoroughly toasted and the homework for the next day was done, the pharaoh put aside the books he’d been using and pulled out another, plus some blank sheets of paper. Bakura eyed the cover of the book.

“ _ Egyptian Grammar _ ? What’s that for?”

“I’m going to teach you how to read and write.”

“I know how to read and write, you jackass!”

“No,” said the pharaoh, steely. “I’m going to teach you to  _ read and write _ . As I was taught. As nobody else alive except maybe the Ishtar clan probably can.”

Bakura stared at him. “Why?”

“Because we need an edge,” said the pharaoh, patiently. “We both retained the ability to speak Japanese from them, but no one else applying for that internship is going to have skills at this caliber.”

“You don’t even remember your name!”

“No, but I remember everything else. I can read and write in hieroglyphs, hieratic, and Demotic. I tested myself on some different passages. I can read them all. Even translate them to modern Arabic. Or Japanese, though it’s less easy.” The pharaoh fixed him with a stare. “I can teach you, I’m confident of it.” He wavered slightly. “And, don’t you want to learn? It’s your language too.”

“My language was a dialect nobody else speaks anymore,” said Bakura, but relented when he saw the pharaoh’s shoulders slump. “Yes, yes I want to learn, damn it all.”

“Good, let’s start with some basic writing practice.”

Knowing the speech already  _ did _ make picking up the writing system easier. It only took a handful of weeks before Bakura was sight reading, and while his hieroglyphs didn’t have the same neatness that the pharaoh’s did, they were legible. 

And wonder of wonders, his grades began to pick up.

While he outwardly despised the idea, Bakura took to practicing his symbols on spare bits of paper, doodling things he remembered seeing on tomb walls, or graffiti chipped on village buildings.

“Congratulations,” said the pharaoh dryly, leaning over him one day. “You’ve managed to successfully write ‘Anubis has nice buttocks’.”

“Only a pity nobody put  _ that _ in their tomb,” said Bakura, scratching out the last part of an owl. He’d been carefully repeating the same four symbols over and over, testing his memory of them.

The pharaoh squinted at his work. “And what’s this?”

Bakura hunched, caught. “Uh, just something I saw. In a tomb somewhere.”

The pharaoh raised an eyebrow and snorted. “How very specific.” He smiled, a stupid expression, that nonetheless drew Bakura’s eye like a magnet, and turned away. “Fine. Keep your secrets. I don’t recognize the word anyway.”

“It was in your father’s tomb,” Bakura blurted.

The pharaoh froze. His eyes went wide, lips parted.

“Down in the innermost sanctuary,” said Bakura barreled on. “I couldn’t read any of the text of course, how could I? But I remembered what it looked like. They all had the...damn it, the ropes around them. I think they were names. His, his fuck of a brother, his wives.” 

He paused, swallowed hard, and took the plunge. “It took me a while, to write out what I could remember, sort through it. I think...I think this one was yours.”

The pharaoh was still standing there, staring at him.

“I think your name is Atem.”

Atem’s face fractured, shock and wonder and something like grief and joy commingled on it. It was arresting, strange and weirdly beautiful, and it made Bakura feel like someone had grabbed his heart with their bare hands and squeezed it.

Then Atem crossed the room in two steps, grabbed him by the shoulders, and kissed him.

Bakura froze, his heart racing into overdrive. But before he could react, Atem recoiled, an expression of horror on his face.

“I’m so sorry,” he gasped. “I shouldn’t have—I didn’t ask, you don’t—”

Bakura dropped his pen and grabbed him, leaving smear marks of ink on Atem’s face.

“Yes, you asshole,” he said. “You should have asked.”

Then he dragged Atem down into him and kissed him so hard they nearly toppled over the chair.

_ Your name is Atem. _

* * *

The hour was late, and Bakura couldn’t sleep.

He’d left the window open to get some air, traffic noise be damned, but he felt restless and unable to settle. He got out of bed, draped himself out the window.

The river was a glittering snake in the moonlight and the lights of the city. He twisted, stared up at Atem’s window. Saw it was also open.

A split second’s terrible decision later, Bakura climbed out his own, and began to scale the outside facade.

Atem was tucked into bed, reading. He jumped when Bakura slid in the window, but otherwise made no sound.

“Bakura?” he whispered. “Is something wrong?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Bakura prowled the room, restless, unable to articulate just  _ why  _ he’d come here.

“I see.” Atem put his book aside, fiddled with the sheets. “Did you..? Did you want to join me?”

Bakura paused. There had definitely been some enthusiastic making out on several occasions, but as most of their meetings took place during the day, while people were awake, they so far hadn’t really done much else. 

_ He _ also hadn’t done much else, not since Yugi. The thought sent a twinge of equal parts pain and remembered pleasure through him.

“Yes.”

Atem moved the sheets aside and Bakura crawled in to join him. The bed was narrow enough that there was not really room to lie except on top of each other. Bakura wriggled out of his sleeping shorts and t-shirt as Atem flailed about awkwardly under him trying to do the same.

And then there was that dizzying sensation of skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Atem had spread his legs to accommodate him and Bakura found himself nestled in a very pleasant position indeed. Neither of them were hard yet, but he made some encouraging movements and heard Atem bite back a noise.

“Did I tell you Yugi and I did it in a car?”

Atem’s breath hitched. “No. Did I tell you that Ryou and I did in the palace?”

“Fuck, that’s hot.” Bakura nuzzled and licked along his neck. “What would you have done, you think, if I’d crawled in the window of your bedroom at the palace?”

“Probably stabbed you.”

“Probably,” agreed Bakura. “But in made-up-reality land, what would you have done?”

“This, I think,” said Atem, and kissed him, tongue and teeth and demanding.

“Yeah but people didn’t kiss like that much, remember?” Bakura pushed himself closer and tried hard not to groan. “That’s a newfangled, modern invention. I have a better idea.”

“Hm?”

“I can show you what you’re in for when we actually do find Yugi again.”

“What are you—ah!” Atem hissed through his teeth. He wasn’t unmanageable, but there was definitely a world of difference between being sucked and doing the sucking, Bakura found. He pinned him flat to the bed, and managed to scrunch himself up without falling off the end.

Atem didn’t last long. He bit his own wrist, squirmed, and came in Bakura’s mouth, annoyingly bitter on his tongue but the experience overall worth it because he got to see Atem with his pupils blown wide, looking ridiculously blissed out. He was about to ask about getting those hands on him, but then Atem was groping over towards the night stand.

“I have something,” he mumbled.

“Huh?”

Atem carefully slid open the drawer and pulled out two packets, one that looked like it could have held ketchup, the other square and unmistakable.

Bakura stared at him. “Where did you get those?”

It was a fair question. They weren’t all that easy to obtain to begin with and doing so risked prosecution if you were caught.

Atem flushed. “The guy who lives at the end of the hall on this floor. He...there’s a man that he sees. Sometimes. I asked and he gave me one. Do you...want to try?”

The thought was undoubtedly very strange, but the idea somehow excited him.

“Me in you or?”

Atem looked embarrassed. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“It’s not…” Bakura paused as he tried to articulate this. “You aren’t doing this as some kind of  _ apology _ , are you?”

Atem hesitated. Bakura scowled but Atem shook his head.

“Not...only,” he said, sounding a bit desperate. “Can’t someone have more than one reason for doing a thing?”

“Okay, okay. You’re going to have to help me figure this out then.”

It took a surprisingly long time to get themselves sorted, get the condom on right and then find a position that didn’t end up causing a crick. Neither of them wanted to try hands and knees, though everyone at school joked about that where the teachers couldn’t hear. But once they’d figured it out, and Bakura had Atem on his back and was rocking inside him, while he made muffled but delightful noises, he found it very hard to think of anywhere he’d rather be.

It might have been more magical if it had lasted more than a minute and a half.

Still, Atem kissed him warmly and used one of his sheets to help Bakura shimmy out the window, so it wasn’t all bad.

* * *

The Domino Airport was of a respectable size considering the overall city population, and had its own international customs office. Bakura hurried along behind Atem, and told himself it had  _ nothing  _ to do with being intimidated. Atem just had that uncanny ability to pull out that royal sense of assery that made people in bureaucracies do what he wanted.

That the main curator for the exhibition had  _ not _ been Isis had turned out to be a double-edged sword. In fact the debate over whether to contact the various people who might potentially remember them had been one of their most bitter arguments. Bakura had wanted to solicit help from Malik; Atem had cited the numerous times he’d tried to kill him. Bakura had relented and suggested Isis; Atem had pointed out that they had no way to contact her and that if she  _ didn’t _ remember, there was no more surefire way to reveal themselves as potentially asylum worthy than by sending that kind of letter to a high government official. Bakura suggested contacting Ryou or Yugi or both; Atem had pointed out that neither of them had email addresses and that there was a distinct possibility of someone else opening their mail if they received a strange letter from Egypt. They’d barked and snapped at each other until they’d exhausted themselves, then just decided to follow the original plan and show up at the door.

If some of the movies were to be believed, some people found that kind of thing romantic.

After settling in their hotel rooms, and being told that they had the rest of the weekend to themselves until the main curator and the third intern arrived, they’d taken to the streets, only to wind up in the midst of another argument.

“Why wouldn’t we go to the Game Shop?” said Atem.

“Oh, I don’t know, because there’s  _ all sorts of people who could potentially be there _ ?” Bakura snapped. “Ryou’s apartment is at least likely to be empty or have just him in it.”

Atem wavered, looking stubborn. Bakura gaped at him. “You ass! You just want to see Yugi first!”

“Untrue!” huffed Atem, looking just a tad guilty. “I want to see Ryou quite badly but…”

“But?”

“I didn’t tell Yugi how I…” Atem swallowed. “I never said anything, because I was, well, dead, and then when I thought I’d have to die to atone. I didn’t want to put that burden on him, but I could  _ feel _ , all the time. I could feel how he felt. We never said it, and the last time we spoke...I told him goodbye. That we’d never see each other again.”

Bakura sighed. They were in public, so any of the less hopelessly mushy methods of comforting Atem were off the table. “As I’ve told you many times before,” he said. “You are an emotionally constipated, arrogant ass.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Bakura leaned over and looked him in the eyes.

“We’re going to Ryou’s apartment,” he said.

Annoyance flashed across Atem’s face. Bakura threw up his hands. “Hey don’t blame me, I just have a feeling. Call it the heart of the cards if you want.”

“You don’t believe in that.”

“Excuse you?” said Bakura. “Which one of us spent the last three millenia being powered by literal magic and which of us spent it sitting on their thumbs in a golden box? Don’t mistake me for Kaiba.”

“Fine, we’ll go to Ryou’s apartment because your  _ feelings _ say so.”

Ryou’s apartment was two buses and one train ride from the hotel. There was no doorman, thankfully, and the lobby doors were unlocked during the day, so they slipped up into the carpeted halls, padding down in search of the right apartment. 

Bakura found, to his disgust, that he was actually nervous about the whole affair.

They both waffled about the door of the apartment, half listening, half hesitating to knock, until Atem squared his shoulders and did, quick and efficient.

There was a long silence, and then the door opened.

Yugi was standing in the doorway, his hair askew, and smudges of flour on his shirt and pants. In one hand he had a mixing spoon, covered in batter.

It was this mixing spoon that ended up on Bakura’s shirt, as they both ended up with an armful of Yugi.

They staggered into the apartment like a many-legged beast, and Yugi and Atem were talking over each other, words running together and Yugi was crying and smearing flour on all of them.

“Yugi?”

Bakura turned. Ryou was leaning out of a bedroom door, his eyes gone round as saucers. He had just a second to wonder if he should run when Ryou was on them, catching him around the waist and then there was a tangle of arms and Ryou was pressing his face into Bakura’s hair because of course he was taller than Bakura now. And the whole thing was a huge emotional mess and Bakura felt paralyzed he but couldn’t stop himself from leaning against Ryou, smelling his deeply familiar scent that brought memories flooding in of  _ right _ and  _ fits _ and  _ perfect _ and  _ mine _ and pressing tentative kisses against the fabric of his shirt.

They stood like a ridiculous grove of tangled trees, touching and murmuring, until Yugi pointed out that they should probably close the door. And then Ryou launched into hosting mode, and went and started making them some tea, and they all followed him into the kitchen to help.

It turned out to be brownies that Yugi was making, and Bakura helped him scrape the rest of the batter into the pan while Atem assisted Ryou with collecting the tea accoutrements.

“How are you here?” said Yugi, once they were all piled on the couch in a heap of limbs, precariously balancing tea cups on knees and chests and thighs.

“An internship,” said Atem. “With the Dominio Museum exhibit.”

“Seriously?” said Ryou. “How?”

“We are real,” said Bakura. “We have names and birth certificates and visas and every other stupid piece of paper you need these days. We just...poofed into existence, and the rest of the universe rearranged itself so we’d always existed?”

Ryou and Yugi both froze as one; it was actually sort of funny to watch.

“You have names?” said Yugi quietly and Bakura belatedly remembered that neither of them would have a single clue about  _ that _ whole mess.

“Atem,” said Atem softly, his eyes shining. “My name is Atem, and I know because Bakura gave it back to me.”

Bakura flushed under the collective stare that turned in his direction.

“So you two…” said Ryou. “Worked out your differences?”

“More or less,” said Atem dryly. “He is an excellent kisser.”

“I’ll say,” said Yugi, sounding just the slightest bit dreamy.

“And what about you two?” said Bakura, blustering. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the  _ one bedroom _ being actually used.”

Both Yugi and Ryou both went a bit red.

“I mean,” said Yugi. “We graduated in June. I got a job with Kaibacorp in their R&D department and Ryou’s been working at the library in special collections. It kind of made sense for us to move in together.” He reached out and took Ryou’s hand, his expression soft. “At first it just helped being around somebody who...understood, but things...shifted, later on.”

Ryou leaned against Bakura, eyes half-closed. “Are you staying?” he said, quietly, and in a way that reminded Bakura that this was someone who’d had everyone leave, eventually.

“Would take an army of monsters to tear me away,” he said.

“That sentiment is shared,” said Atem quietly. “But while we are on that note… at the risk of ruining the mood, we are going to have to get real jobs after six months or risk deportation.”

Bakura pressed a hand against Ryou’s hair. Yugi’s legs were tangled with his own and Atem’s hand rested on his chest, a spot of warmth. His mother was a phone call away. For the first time in...well, anytime, he felt a sense of calm. A contentment, lapping like gentle waves against him. Yes there would be challenges and yes they might all drive each other mad on different levels, but they were here and together and safe, and they’d faced down gods and monsters and their own trauma and broken hearts. What was a collective living situation and a regular job in comparison to that?

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a scheme to blackmail Kaiba into hiring us.”

The collective sound of their laughter was pure music.

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes on the text (if you like notes):
> 
> [Aunt Bessie's](https://auntbessies.co.uk/ranges/sweet-treats-and-desserts/pancake-mix-480g-makes-16) is an actual brand of pancake mix available in the UK. It is, according to trusted sources, "notoriously terrible".
> 
> Jason Vorhees [did not in fact ever use a chainsaw](https://fridaythe13th.fandom.com/wiki/Chainsaw) in the Friday the 13th movies. I am choosing to blame this on Bakura not paying close enough attention and some wires getting crossed. Or maybe it was Leatherface. Shhh.
> 
> The song which plays in the car when Yuugi and Yami Bakura are making out is [Little Bitty Pretty One](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8j4mn4eF-c) by Thurston Harris. This song of course made an appearance in the 1983 horror film [Christine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_\(1983_film\)#Songs_appearing_in_film), based on a Stephen King novel about a haunted car.
> 
> The Cadillac which plays [Bad Moon Rising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUQiUFZ5RDw) is borrowed from the _John Dies at the End_. At one point the titular John uses said Cadillac to ramp over a fence into a zombie quarantine facility.
> 
> Likewise, the sidestory titles are also borrowed from the David Wong methodology of naming things (read: I stole them from the JDatE books). Also the fact that the sidestories exist can be blamed entirely on me making the mistake of wondering what was happening to Malik, who at this point in Battle City was still stuck in Anzu's body, while everyone else was off having Dramatic Moments. The main chapter titles are of course the names for one of a sequential series of string figures one can make when playing Cat's Cradle.
> 
> The ice and snow region is a reference to the John Carpenter film, _The Thing_, in which the titular monster can take on the image of the people it encounters.
> 
> I did quite a bit of research into what Cairo was like during the 1990s which was intended to be worked into the end bit between Atem and Bakura, but only small portions of this are probably evident. Suffice to say however, obtaining a condom for that er, particular purpose, at that time was a bit of a dicey proposition, hence their neighbor's hesitation.
> 
> Atem teaching Bakura to write is also borrowed in small part from the phenomenal (and phenomenally IC imho) Atem/Thief King Bakura fic [Thief of Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4330782/chapters/9820791). Please go read it (though be aware that it is seriously NSFW).


End file.
